In today's New York Times , FDIC Chair Sheila Bair weighs in on the notion that the US needs one "super regulator" to oversee all financial entities. Bair says the Obama Administration is taking the right tack in tightening regulation, but that shifting to one single regulator would not provide the control that proponents of the idea suggest, and, in her eyes, would make the system more susceptible to some of the problems that sparked the current recession. But most importantly, she writes, it would threaten the US banking system in general, and harm small banks in particular: The principal enablers of our current difficulties were institutions that took on enormous risk by exploiting regulatory gaps between banks and the nonbank shadow financial system, and by using unregulated over-the-counter derivative contracts to develop volatile and potentially dangerous products. Consumers continue to face huge gaps in personal financial protections. We also lack a credible method for closing large financial institutions without inflicting severe collateral damage on the economy. The creation of a single regulator for all federal- and state-chartered banks would not address these problems. Rather, it would endanger a thriving, 150-year-old banking system that has separate charters for federal and state banks. Within this system, state-chartered institutions tend to be community-oriented and very close to the small businesses and consumers they serve. They provide loans that support economic growth and job creation, especially in rural areas. Main Street banks also are sensitive to market discipline because they know that they’re not too big to fail and that they’ll be closed if they become insolvent. Read The Case Against a Super-Regulator here .