"President Joe Biden's appointment of Christy Goldsmith Romero to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will put the longtime regulator atop a powerful agency that's been torched by findings of rampant harassment and toxic behavior.

If she's approved by the Senate, repairing that culture will be her first job. But she'll also be tasked with policing more than 4,500 banks that hold about $24 trillion in assets. And if you know Goldsmith Romero, you know she takes a dim view of regulators who downplay their enforcement responsibilities.

Here's how Goldsmith Romero once described her responsibilities as special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the massive government bank rescue operation where she was charged with leading 140 people (including 85 special agents) who investigated fraud, waste and abuse at financial institutions:

'I knew that we could not turn to the bank regulators to point us to the fraud,' she said, describing her efforts to develop 'innovative techniques' to identify bad behavior. In some cases, she said, 'bankers have been going to jail and being sentenced to prison.'"