And to answer that last question, yes.

We’re about at time. Let me thank Sheila Bair for her crisp, clear, frank responses to many tough questions, and thanks to all the participants for posing them. Bull by the Horns is an exceptional book, so thanks also for writing it. It tells us, in some ways all too clearly, what we needed to know.

Thanks to Firedoglake for having this Book Salon!

A couple of follow-ups…

Can regulators now impose such a requirement, or do we need to go back and repeal the Commodities Futures Modernization Act first?

And, what about the counter-argument that the CDS market would just move off-shore?

I realize you are working your way through a lot of good questions, but let me toss out one more that you might get to eventually.

According to reports I’ve read in the press, Sec. Geithner believes that we need our big banks in order to have major US players on the world financial scene — to penetrate emerging markets such as India and China, for instance. This he sees as a source of profit income for the US economy as a whole.

What’s your view of this argument?

Picking up on that, isn’t this the moment? With the President re-elected, the economy and most of the banks stable for now, why not take the opportunity to take apart and restructure one of the biggest SDI’s, and show that it can be done?

Let me ask a question (along Bill Black’s line) about the role of criminal referrals in the process of bank supervision. It’s a topic that doesn’t come up much in your book.

What’s your view of referrals as a regulatory tool and, in your view, have the regulators and the DOJ done their job in this area?

Also, what is the role and potential for civil litigation, at this point, to recover in the case of securities and derivatives based on fraudulent mortgages?

Is the idea of requiring an insured interest in CDS enforceable?

Or to put it another way, what would it take to enforce it?

Something he may have the opportunity to do, in a few weeks — if he chooses to do it.

That being so — here are two more policy questions:

- Are the biggest banks truly restored to health at this point? Or do they still have major unresolved problems on their balance sheets, such as toxic mortgage-backed-securities?

- If they are now basically healthy, thanks to the taxpayer, what should be done to deal with the fact that they are (in some cases) to complex to unravel? These are what Bill Black calls “Systemically Dangerous Institutions”. Does the government now have the power to reconstruct them, and if not, what new authority should be drafted?

(For readers who may not know, Martin Feldstein is the Harvard Professor who first brought Larry Summers to Washington, to work for the Council of Economic Advisers in 1982, when Feldstein became CEA Chair under Reagan. I suspect that they have remained in touch…)

Let me ask another policy question. What is the main problem with “megabanks” — even when they are not failing — and how should it be dealt with?

I know you deal with this at the end of your book but a few words here would be very helpful.

To follow up, is there any chance that Larry Summers might have been unaware of these proposals, or of the history of the Home Owners Loan Corporation?

(same question as emptywheel, just mine is less pithy~!)

So, let me follow up on that .. did you see that as being mainly a professional difference of view about the potential banking-system consequences of trying to untangle and resolve Citi, or, in part, was it a political matter as well?

What was the biggest obstacle to taking that course toward Citi?

Let’s begin with mortgage modifications. Just last Wednesday in Washington — I’m told by someone who was there — Larry Summers stated that in early 2009 there were no viable plans for systemic loan modifications — nothing that would not have undermined the economic incentives for solvent homeowners to pay their mortgages.

What’s your view of this claim?

Welcome, Chairman Bair! It’s a pleasure to have you here.

Ready to go?

And thank you again Max, for a great couple of hours, and to Bev and FDL for having me on. Also to my (many) friends who came by.

I missed that one.

If you want to see (a much younger version of me) in debate with Milton F., check out the 1990 re-issue of Free To Choose — first program.

Yes, I think that was a favorite Salazar trick. Your memory is good.