Last year, Forbes ranked Sheila Bair the second most powerful woman in the world behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), believes there is no financial juggernaut too big for the FDIC to handle, and is now seeking expanded authority for her agency to put down bank-holding companies that cannot stand on their own. During a speech at the Economic Club of New York, Bair said the FDIC is more than capable of dealing with not only failed commercial banks (its main mission) but also teetering giants, insisting no institution is “too big to fail.” The speech was considered the opening salvo in Bair’s lobbying effort to convince Congress that the FDIC, and not the Federal Reserve, should tackle problems plaguing the nation’s largest financial institutions.