A Fighting Chance

Heading for a restaurant that he said was one of his favorites, we bounced along in the backseat of an SUV driven—very fast—by one of his security guys. I had put on my seat belt before the car pulled out of the Treasury encampment, but as we sped along I noticed that the secretary was still unbelted. Like a bossy third-grade teacher, I looked at him and said, “Put on your seat belt, Mr. Secretary.”


Like a naughty kid, he looked back and said, “I don’t have to.”

He explained with obvious pride that the car was bulletproof and that the driver and his partner were both highly trained and carried big guns. “We’re safe here,” he said in a tone meant to end the conversation.

“What? Are you kidding?” I said. “What good is that if we get hit and this thing turns over a few times and you smash your head against that great bulletproof window?” I think I may have raised my voice a little.

He didn’t put on his seat belt all the way to the restaurant.

We sat at a table in the back, and while we ate, we debated a number of issues involving markets, market failures, and the role of government. More than once, he said he was surprised that I believed so strongly in markets. More than once, I emphasized that markets are great—but only if there really is a level playing field where both sellers and their customers understand the terms of the deal.

On the drive back to the office, Secretary Geithner put on his seat belt.

Late in the day, several Treasury lawyers came to call. This session started like all the other get-to-know-you meetings I’d had that day. But the lawyers were all carrying file folders, which put me on alert. No one makes a social call carrying a file folder.

After we shook hands all around and everyone was seated, one of the lawyers said he had some bad news. No one made eye contact with me. Reluctantly, a second lawyer explained that the law had a little glitch. With that, my visitors reached into their file folders and pulled out photocopies of a single page from the long Dodd–Frank Act. It seemed there was a one-word error: a provision setting up the consumer agency referred to powers under this “subtitle” rather than powers under this “title.”

Huh. It was just one word, yet the difference was huge.

The statutory language was a tangle, but using the wrong word in this sentence meant that the new agency would likely get its full powers only after a director was confirmed by the Senate (or, as we eventually figured out, appointed by the president during a congressional recess). The Department of the Treasury had some ability to get the agency moving before there was a director, but its power would be limited.

One little word. I had one little thought: Oh crap.

The lawyers handed me a copy, and I read the language again and again. Could it be interpreted another way? Apparently not.

Okay, but could the mistake be corrected by getting Congress to provide a technical fix? Nope. Evidently, someone had already quietly reached out to friends in Congress to see if a fix might be possible, but everyone agreed that the politics made it impossible to correct the error.

And the final question: How had this happened? The lawyers said they didn’t know. I pushed a little, but at this point it didn’t really matter. The bill was hundreds of pages long, and as different staffers and committees negotiated over this sentence and that paragraph, the text of the legislation had probably gone through thousands of revisions. Mistakes happen, and what was done was done. Now we had to live with it.

Bruce was teaching classes that week, so he had already gone back to Massachusetts. I let myself into the apartment late at night. I checked in by phone with Amelia and Sushil, as I did every day. She was still flat on her back in bed. One more day had come and gone, and the baby had grown just a little bigger and a little stronger. Amelia’s due date was now two months away. I imagined the tiny baby who would soon be born, and I said one more silent prayer, asking that he wait just a little longer before making his appearance.

Will You Behave Yourself?



Less than two weeks after starting my new job, I was scheduled to speak to the Financial Services Roundtable, a group of CEOs of big-deal banks, mortgage companies, and the like. They were the titans behind the lobbyists, the ones who had fought tooth and nail against the agency. My sweet husband thought I was nuts to show up at a place where a posse of CEOs would be armed with knives and forks.

But the director of the Roundtable was Steve Bartlett, a former congressman who was cheerful, charming, and committed to the idea that in politics, nothing is permanent, not even enemies. I appreciated Steve’s invitation, and I welcomed the chance to talk with anyone about the new agency, including CEOs of big banks. Besides, it was a chance to make the argument that the new agency was good for competition—and good for banks that wanted to make their money from selling honest products.