Biden Nears Pick for Next F.D.I.C. Chair

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Three weeks after President Biden vowed to pick a new leader for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the bank regulator shaken by a vast workplace abuse scandal, a front-runner has emerged: Christy Goldsmith Romero, who sits on the five-member Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to two people with knowledge of the administration’s thinking. Ms. Goldsmith Romero is a lawyer who, after the financial crisis, spent more than 12 years in an office created by Congress to investigate fraud and other misconduct by banks that received money from the government’s roughly $450 billion crisis rescue package, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. From 2011 to 2022, Ms. Goldsmith Romero led the office as the special inspector general for the program. Her work exposing fraud, which often put her at odds with not only bankers but also some government officials who were concerned about the potential damage it would do to overall public opinion of the bailout, has made her especially appealing for the job of cleaning up the F.D.I.C., said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss the matter. Mr. Biden has not made a final decision. Ms. Goldsmith Romero’s position as the front-runner for the job was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.