Banking Bad

In this episode of Banking Bad, former FDIC General Counsel Rick Osterman joins John Bovenzi and Tom Vice to explore the legal side of bank failure: who is held accountable, how responsibility is determined, and where the line is drawn between poor judgment, negligence, gross negligence, and fraud. The discussion looks at political pressure, regulatory accountability, recurring early-warning signs, and the responsibilities of bank directors.

Grounded in his FDIC experience, Rick provides his perspective on legal accountability, FDIC investigations and recovery claims, regulatory and criminal coordination, the regulatory “pendulum,” and directors’ duty to be informed and engaged, especially when institutions begin taking greater risks.

Joe Fellerman, a senior asset liquidation and bank recovery and resolution planning expert joins Banking Bad to discuss the dramatic improvements that have been made in the bank resolution process after the 2008 financial crisis.

In the turmoil following the failures of Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual and Wachovia, financial markets froze and confidence in the banking system deteriorated rapidly. Former FDIC senior official Diane Ellis takes us behind the scenes as regulators worked to stabilize a rapidly unravelling financial system by designing the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program—effectively “building the plane while flying it.”

Diane explains how the program’s two components—the Debt Guarantee Program and the Transaction Account Guarantee Program (TAG)—helped banks regain access to funding, protected business transaction accounts and reduced the risk of destabilizing deposit runs. David Walker adds an international perspective on the crisis-driven containment measures taken in other countries to respond to the spreading market crisis.

The discussion examines why these industry-funded guarantees succeeded without attracting the same criticism as other bailouts, why Congress later restricted the FDIC’s authority, and whether similar tools could help contain contagion in the next financial crisis.

Only days after successfully resolving Washington Mutual, FDIC officials were confronted with an even greater challenge: the impending failure of Wachovia, then the fourth-largest bank in the United States. In this episode, Jim Wigand joins John Bovenzi and Tom Vice to recount the extraordinary race to stabilize a far more complex institution whose interconnected structure and deteriorating market confidence threatened to deepen the 2008 financial crisis. Their firsthand account reveals the difficult decisions, intense negotiations, and constant balancing act between protecting financial stability and preserving market discipline during one of the most uncertain weeks in modern banking history. The conversation then turns beyond the events of 2008 to examine the lessons that reshaped modern bank resolution policy. From systemic risk exceptions and the "Too Big to Fail" debate to the emergence of new resolution tools and the challenges posed by Silicon Valley Bank and rapidly evolving financial technology, the discussion explores how regulators continue to adapt their playbook to preserve confidence in an increasingly interconnected and fast-moving financial system.

In September 2008, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers shook confidence across the global financial system, Washington Mutual became the largest bank failure in U.S. history. In this episode, former FDIC Director of Resolutions and Receiverships Jim Wigand joins John Bovenzi and Tom Vice to provide a firsthand account of the frantic days leading up to WaMu's collapse and its sale to JPMorgan Chase. Together, they explain how regulators balanced rapidly deteriorating market confidence, mounting deposit withdrawals, and intense time pressure to engineer a resolution that protected depositors without resorting to an FDIC-funded bailout.

Beyond recounting the events themselves, the discussion explores the innovative resolution strategies developed during the crisis, the difficult policy choices surrounding uninsured deposits and creditor losses, and why the Washington Mutual transaction became a model for resolving large financial institutions. The lessons learned continue to shape bank resolution policy today and remain highly relevant as regulators confront the challenges of preserving confidence in an era of increasingly rapid bank runs.

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.

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 Mutual to Silicon Valley Bank, Eric shows how uninsured deposits have repeatedly turned institutional anxiety into system-wide risk. Eric explains why the old distinction between “stable” branch deposits and “volatile” brokered deposits no longer captures today’s dynamic. In a world where a depositor can instantly move $50 million from a phone, the real question is not how the money arrived at the bank—but whether the depositor has any reason to stay.

The discussion then turns to the difficult policy choices surrounding modern deposit insurance, including whether business payroll and operating accounts have become the Achilles heel of the system. Would broader protection reduce dangerous runs, or create too much moral hazard? The episode also looks beyond banks to money market funds, private credit, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits where similar run dynamics can easily emerge. It leaves listeners with a central question: if runs are now faster, more contagious, and more technologically amplified than ever before, are our crisis-management tools keeping up?

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 when short-term profits, aggressive growth, a high-flying culture and large loan participations sold to other banks eager to share in the returns overwhelm basic discipline. When it all fell apart and the bank failed, its uninsured depositors and the FDIC paid the price. Lesylee’s firsthand account connects Penn Square to broader lessons about deposit insurance, bank resolution, and the people left behind when a bank fails. Lesylee’s later FDIC career gives the conversation unusual depth, showing both how a failed bank is handled by the FDIC and the emotional burden carried by those who must tell depositors their money is gone. 

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 decisions made to bring the financial world back from the edge of systemic collapse.

The people you'll hear from have an unusual vantage point. They are not Monday morning quarterbacks. When banks went bad, they were on the front lines meeting with the people whose lives were upended. They were the ones working around the clock to manage the problems and implement solutions. They will tell us what they have learned and what we should be doing to prepare ourselves for the next crisis.

Whether the next crisis is triggered by cryptocurrency, private lending, fintech, social media, or something else and whether it spills over to the more regulated banking sector we can't know for sure. But what we do know is that the seeds for the next crisis are being planted today. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.