Too Interconnected to Fail

In Episode 3 of Banking Bad, our guest is Eric Spitler, a law professor at the University of North Carolina and former Director of Legislative Affairs at the FDIC and the SEC, for a timely discussion about one of the oldest threats in banking: the bank run.  From Continental Illinois to Washington …

Banking Bad examines past financial crises from the perspective of people directly responsible for steering the system through financial calamity. It tells the story of the real time, high-pressure decisions made to deal with bank failures, contagion events, financial rescues and the human decision…

In this episode of Banking Bad, we speak with Sandra Thompson, former Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and former Director of Bank Supervision at the FDIC, about one of the most important—but least understood—parts of financial crisis management: the lender of last resort.

This episode tells the story of Penn Square National Bank through the eyes of Lesylee Sullivan Hodge, who worked at the bank for a brief time before beginning a long career with the FDIC. What began as a small Oklahoma City bank became a symbol of how quickly a financial institution can go rogue wh…