One of the great ironies of this financial crisis (and there are lots) is that the only financial regulator remotely capable of inspiring confidence in anyone is a Republican Bush appointee who's gone largely ignored by the White House since Tim Geithner reportedly tried to push her out of her job for not being enough of a "team player." We speak of course of FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, who has gotten so much practice nationalizing financial institutions since the crisis began she let 60 Minutes come watch and record one for a segment earlier this month. And now she's been pushing for the authority to take her operation to the likes of AIG, Bear Stearns and the rest of the Too Big To Fail cartel. (And as finance blogger Felix Salmon explained in the New York Times today, she may get her wish as part of Geithner's public-private toxic asset buyout plan.)

On Wednesday Bair went on the hyperconservative supply-side pundit Larry Kudlow's CNBC show to sweetly explain why, when a company like AIG fails, she ought to be able to

come in, repudiate employment contracts, pick and choose who you want to keep, who you want to get rid of, what you want to pay them. Replace the management, get rid of the boards, bring in better management and do an orderly unwinding of the entity.

Kudlow seemed stunned. "You've done this before?" he asked. (About 50 times since the crisis began.) But he remained polite in the face of all this suspiciously socialist-sounding rhetoric -- because it came from a Republican. Her old mentor Bob Dole even confirmed it, an American Banker report today reveals...

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