Sheila Bair, Chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is supposedly one of the few at least halfway sensible federal regulators who actually warned about the banks’ risky behavior and maintains a healthy skepticism of the laissez faire ideology that shielded their predatory behavior both before and after it tanked the US and Western economies.

Firedoglake.com founder Jane Hamsher appeared on MSNBC this afternoon with host Cenk Uygur. The topic for discussion was the evolving story that Christina Romer’s resignation as head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers is symptomatic of a larger problem of women not being treated equally within the Obama administration. Hamsher describes how, especially within the White House economic team, women who were right about the economic meltdown are ignored in favor of the men on the team who were “aggressively wrong” in making both the decisions that led to the disaster as well as current decisions that are not improving the situation sufficiently.

The people who don’t want Elizabeth Warren running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have consistently sought other options.

Timothy Geithner doesn’t like Elizabeth Warren, she is mean to him. Who, then, can we get to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

Nobody pop the champagne corks yet. But we may actually get to the bottom of the fraud in the financial sector.

While Ben Bernanke dreams of being the uber-regulator and chief monitor of systemic risk, a new agreement between the FDIC and other banking regulators like the Fed allows the FDIC to have independent direct access to big banks instead of making the FDIC to rely on his tame stable of regulators at the Fed.

Chalk one up for real oversight.

Four banks were closed by the FDIC yesterday, bringing the 2010 total up to 90 — a number we didn’t reach last year until after Labor Day. The Fed, meanwhile, seems comfortable with high unemployment and apparently thinks the banks are doing just fine. But one potential financial reform proposal — the Kanjorski Amendment — still remains in play, which would take power away from the Fed and put it in the hands of a systemic risk council, which would be expected to either break up or strongly regulate institutions that pose a systemic risk.

Meanwhile, the FDIC is hiring a new Senior Congressional Relations Manager. Sounds like he or she will have some serious business on their desk on the day he or she walks in the door.

The Republicans are perhaps trying to use the Volcker rule as a poison pill, but it really would be the significant way to reduce the political power of the financial sector and end the practice of “too politically connected to fail,” which is the bigger problem. No less than three Federal Reserve regional bank presidents are calling for breaking up the banks, and even Sheila Bair’s FDIC, whose interview was passed around by Democratic operatives yesterday, said the day before that Too Big To Fail banks “pose unique concentrated risks” and should be forced to give more FDIC deposit insurance into the system.

U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida has launched an investigation into alleged fabrication of mortgage transfer documents presented during foreclosures. But there’s more — some documents may also have forged signatures.

Harry Reid stands boldly behind Ben Bernanke’s nomination to continue as Fed Chair, with a statement of support issued by his office late on a Friday afternoon. Yeah, that’s a real ringing endorsement. Meanwhile, the FDIC keeps eating banks and the unemployment in NV continues to grow.