Vern Mc Kinley - Professional Career

Professional Career

From 1985 to 1999 Mr. McKinley worked with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Resolution Trust Corporation and the Department of the Treasury's Office of Thrift Supervision. In 1995, McKinley graduated with honors from the evening program of the George Washington University School of Law.

Since 1999 he has applied his expertise as a legal advisor and regulatory policy expert to work as an advisor to governments on financial sector issues in the U.S., China, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Latvia, the Philippines, Yugoslavia (now Montenegro), Kenya, the Bahamas, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, Mozambique, Belarus, Moldova, Morocco, Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Armenia, Kosovo, and Tajikistan.

McKinley, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, has also completed policy work for the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute and has served as an Alumni Council member of The Fund for American Studies. He is the author of Financing Failure: A Century of Bailouts. The book focuses on the response of the financial agencies to the crises during the 1930s, 1980s and 2000s, with particular emphasis on the most recent crisis. The book questions the standard narrative of the recent financial crisis that bailouts were necessary to avoid a Great Depression.

He has also applied this skeptical approach to the narrative of the lingering status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the tenure of departed FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, the pending legacies of Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Geithner and Dodd-Frank reforms.

McKinley also wrote an earlier policy analysis on the bailouts with Gary Gegenheimer for Cato Institute. As a follow-up to that article he brought four Freedom of Information Act (United States) suits against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Housing Finance Agency to compel release of details on the bailouts. He has been represented in the cases by Judicial Watch. In one of the cases against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve requesting Bear Stearns-related documents, Judicial Watch filed a writ of certiorari on behalf of McKinley requesting that the Supreme Court review the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Another case against the FDIC seeking documents on Citigroup, Bank of America and the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program was sent back to the agency to supplement its responses. In a case against the Federal Housing Finance Agency the agency was ordered to produce documents regarding the choice to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship for review. The final case against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve requesting American International Group and Lehman Brothers-related documents, resulted in the release of about 2,388 pages of redacted documents.

More recently, McKinley has begun litigation in order to access information on the results of post Dodd-Frank responses by financial agencies. McKinley has also commented on the historical link between political and economic cycles.

McKinley has been credited with correctly predicting in 1997 that the structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would one day lead to the meltdown of the two institutions. At that time, he called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “financial time bombs.”

McKinley has testified before a Subcommittee of Congress on issues related to U.S. consumer bankruptcy policy.