South By North Strategies, Ltd.

In the current issue, Time magazine profiles three of the federal officials responsible for reforming the financial system: Shelia Bair of the FDIC, Mary Schapiro of the SEC, and Elizabeth Warren of the TARP oversight panel. From the cover story:

Unlike many of the men they oversee, the new sheriffs of Wall Street never aspired to eight-figure compensation packages or corporate suites. Bair, Schapiro and Warren all made their careers far from Manhattan, taking on new jobs during pregnancies and outhustling the men around them. But it is their willingness to break ranks and challenge the status quo that makes these increasingly powerful women different from their predecessors. As Washington gets down to the hard work of putting laws into place that are designed to prevent another crisis, they are shaping the way government will protect investors and consumers for the next generation. Under financial regulatory reform, which all three women support, both the SEC and the FDIC stand to win powerful new authority to limit and dismantle offenders. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a proposed body now working its way through the Senate, is the brainchild of Warren and is envisioned as a bulwark against what she calls the “tricks and traps” that banks hide in credit-card agreements and mortgages.