As investors lose confidence in the government's financial watchdogs, President-elect Barack Obama named Mary Schapiro to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Daniel Tarullo to the Federal Reserve Board.
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Citing the Bernard Madoff affair, Obama declared that drastic reform and a return to accountability is necessary at the two regulatory agencies. If Schapiro's record is any indication, then she's likely to fulfill the president-elect's wishes.
Schapiro is currently the chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the largest nongovernmental regulator for all securities firms doing business in the U.S. She served under the Clinton administration in 1994 as chairman of the CFTC and as an SEC commissioner from 1988 to 1993.
Gensler was undersecretary of the Treasury Department from 1999 to 2001. He also spent 18
years at Goldman, Sachs & Co., eventually becoming co-head of
finance. Tarullo is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He also held several senior positions in the Clinton administration, ultimately as assistant to the president for International Economic Policy. - Donna Block and Baz Hiralal
