Email Smug.Complacent-Failure@NYFed

 

New York — Michael Alix has been named a senior vice president in the Bank Supervision Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York...Most recently, Mr. Alix worked for the Bear Stearns Companies, Inc, where he served as chief risk officer from 2006-2008 and global head of credit risk management from 1996-2006.

Uh oh. Let’s hope this is a different Michael Alix:

“Right now everything on my screen is flashing red,” said Michael Alix, chief risk officer at Bear, Stearns & Co on May 11 [2006], the day after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke raised interest rates, sending the market gauges he was looking at tumbling. But “that doesn't make me nervous,” says Alix. The bank has built such powerful computing systems that Alix can reevaluate every day the risks of thousands of positions across the firm’s trading businesses under various stressful scenarios to be sure the firm doesn’t hold too much of any risky investment at any one time. That type of analysis used to take a week to complete. “The machine works,” he says. [Emphasis added]

How did that work out for everybody (except Jamie)? I thought so. 

HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE: Alix also had a sufficiently large walk-on in the downfall of Long-Term Capital Management, mostly for enforcing collateral calls, to earn himself five citations in the index to Roger Lowenstein’s ‘When Genius Failed.’ Imagine, all that fuss over $3.5 billion.

New York Fed Names New Senior VP

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Press release Oct. 31 2008

Inside Wall Street’s Culture of Risk

BusinessWeek Jun. 12 2006