A Fighting Chance

Luckily, Elizabeth Vale came with me. After a successful career in banking, Elizabeth had served the president by doing extraordinary work in business outreach. She agreed to leave her very cool job in the White House to help us launch the new agency, and she was now my guide in what felt like a trip to a foreign land.

The dinner was held in a huge ballroom filled with dinner tables laden with elaborate centerpieces, heavy linens, multiple wineglasses, and little presents wrapped with fancy paper. I was seated next to Jamie Dimon, the famous CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

Dimon is a sturdy man, solidly built and supremely self-confident. I’d never met him in person, but I’d already taken him on by name in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. I’d quoted his remark that a financial crisis every five to seven years was inevitable and given my own blunt assessment: He was wrong. The real cause of the crash was not some inevitable cycle; this crash was the direct consequence of years of deliberate deregulation and the resulting dangerous actions of the big banks. I’d repeated this view multiple times, saying that we needed a cop on the beat to make sure that a crash didn’t happen again.

I wondered if Dimon would argue with me over the salad course, but he didn’t. In fact, there were no arguments of any sort. Dimon did most of the talking, complaining loudly about how painful it was for him to be a Democrat when the Democrats were trying to regulate the banks. He talked about his many, many conversations with the president and offered details about the advice he had repeatedly given him.

After a while, our host stood up, thanked everyone, noted a few of the Roundtable’s accomplishments, and then turned to the next item on the agenda. He started by calling out table one, recognizing the member of Congress seated with a group of banking CEOs. A congressman stood up, and everyone applauded. He must be really close to people in the banking industry, I thought. Then it was on to table two. The host announced the name and home state of another member of Congress, the congressman stood and waved, and everyone applauded. And on it went. I was amazed by how many tables in the huge ballroom had at least one senator or representative sitting with the CEOs.

That evening was not the first time the Roundtable had found a way to make nice to members of Congress. Over the preceding decade, the financial industry had spent more than $2 billion in political contributions. And the Roundtable itself had spent more than $70 million on lobbying just to make sure their friends knew where they stood on each detail of banking regulation.

I don’t remember exactly which senators and representatives were there that night, but I do recall being surprised by who was there and how long they stayed. I’d been to a few Washington dinners by this point—mostly dinners honoring consumer advocates—and sometimes a member of Congress made a quick in-and-out appearance. But I’d never seen anything like this.

All those tables and all those lawmakers. Two hours of dinner and conversation. That’s a lot of access.

When it was finally time for my speech, the Roundtable’s president smiled mischievously and said that since I was the scheduled speaker, the knives had been removed from the table settings.

I’m not sure if anyone laughed, but at least now Bruce would have no reason to worry about the knives.

In my speech, I went back to what Joseph Kennedy Sr. had said in the 1930s after he was sworn in to set up the brand new Securities and Exchange Commission during the darkest hours of the Great Depression:

Everybody says that what business needs is confidence. I agree. Confidence that if business does the right thing it will be protected and given a chance to live, make profits and grow, helping itself and helping the country.



Standing before all those bankers and all those people from Congress, I said I believed Joe Kennedy had it exactly right. I underlined his point with my own: “Good regulations create an opportunity for good businesses to thrive.”

Polite applause, and soon the dinner was over. On the way out, one banker from the Midwest said to me, “We just want to know if you are going to behave yourself.”

I smiled and didn’t say anything.

Arizona Sunset or Terra Cotta?



My first few weeks on the job were loaded with meetings, job interviews, speeches, and more meetings.

In addition to Alyssa, I had brought along three new people to help me get started. Dan Geldon shifted jobs yet again—this was now his fourth job in two years—to become my senior advisor, which meant that he helped set priorities, oversaw our media and legislative affairs work, worked on policy issues, and basically did whatever else needed doing.