Word: seidman
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...head of both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Resolution Trust Corporation, Seidman holds what he calls "the biggest damn lousy job in the country." Or to put it another way, it is "a combination of a garbage collector, an IRS agent and an undertaker." He was all those things last week as he took over the collapsing Bank of New England...
...risky venture, but Seidman (pronounced seed-man) is used to living dangerously. Just last June he was out riding on his ranch when his horse shied from an insect and started bucking. "Rather than get thrown off, I jumped off," Seidman later told a reporter. "I had a better chance to land right." The horse dragged him some distance, though, and Seidman had to undergo two operations to repair a fractured pelvis and hip. He still uses a cane but hopes to get rid of it soon...
Looking back, Seidman believes that probably the most important influence on his life was World War II. Fresh out of Dartmouth with his Phi Beta Kappa key in hand, he joined the Navy in 1943 and was assigned to a squadron of nine destroyers in the South Pacific; only two of the nine survived. "I thought I was really blessed to be alive when so many of my friends didn't come back," says Seidman. "The odds were pretty good that I wasn't coming back, so I thought I'd better enjoy myself and still do something for whoever...
After earning a law degree from Harvard, Seidman returned to his native Michigan and got an M.B.A. at Ann Arbor. One focal point of youthful idealism in those days was Michigan's Governor George Romney, so Seidman served as his special assistant for financial affairs. After doing a turn in the family's accounting firm of Seidman & Seidman, he moved to Washington as President Ford's chief economic adviser. With the coming of Jimmy Carter, Seidman went back into business as vice chairman of the Phelps Dodge mining company, then headed the business school of Arizona State University at Tempe...
...those wanderings, Seidman became a master of both political infighting and self-promotion. He made many friends in Congress, partly because he never turned down requests to testify. When Seidman came under White House fire for excessive independence last spring, one appreciative Republican Congressman, Jim Leach of Iowa, said, "Bill Seidman is the Jane Pauley of American government." Like Pauley, Seidman has been very visible on TV lately, which he calls "getting your case before the public." Is there perhaps also a bit of the ham in him? Maybe not, but how many other short, bald, aged accountants have appeared...