WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, penned this op-ed in The Hill calling for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chair Martin Gruenberg to resign. Kennedy details the widespread allegations of sexual harassment at the FDIC, and he argues that Gruenberg must resign to allow a new leader to restore professionalism at the agency.
Key excerpts from Kennedy’s op-ed include:
“Reports of the conduct at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) read like a screenplay for ‘Animal House,’ the 1980s John Belushi movie about campus debauchery at the fictional Faber College. ‘Animal House’ is funny as hell. What’s not funny is finding out that some of the same behavior—and worse—may have been happening for years at one of the agencies charged with supervising America’s banking system.
“According to employees who spoke with the Wall Street Journal, the FDIC functioned as a real-life Faber College where excessive drinking, public urination and sexual harassment were common but professional consequences for this bad behavior were rare. Employees described booze-filled training conferences where trainees regularly ‘puked off the roof’ or drank so much they wound up in the hospital. (There’s no evidence of FDIC toga parties—yet.)”
“Since joining the FDIC’s board in 2005, Chairman Martin Gruenberg has had a front-row seat to it all. He was chair or acting chair of the FDIC for nine of the past 18 years while his agency apparently tolerated a culture of debauchery and harassment. Gruenberg either knew about the abuse women faced at the FDIC and failed to address it or was negligently blind to it.
“Either way, Gruenberg should resign.”
“If Gruenberg wants to show his employees and the American people—for the first time in his nearly two decades of leadership—that he is doing something to end abuse, he should resign and allow a real leader to restore professionalism to the FDIC. Right now, it’s #MeToo—except for the connected at the FDIC.”
Read Kennedy’s full op-ed here.
Read Kennedy’s letter to Chair Gruenberg here.