There are times when you can hardly believe what you are reading. Today might be one of those times.

Ask yourself: Who is the last person you would want overseeing the safety and soundness of the U.S. banking system?

There is a good chance it is the same person the U.S. Federal Reserve just hired.

In an astounding announcement, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York revealed that it has hired Michael Alix, the man who was in charge of risk management at Bear Stearns.

In case you have forgotten, the storied collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns cost taxpayers a whopping $29 billion—the amount of money the Federal Reserve had to give JP Morgan Chase to step in and make good Bear Stearns’s obligations. Untold more billions will also be paid by taxpayers to try to end the banking crisis that was first made evident by the failure of Bear Stearns.

Couldn’t the Federal Reserve find someone from a financial institution that didn’t spectacularly fail and set off a chain of dominoes that eventually took down every single one of America’s investment banks? (Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are still hanging on to life, but not as investment banks.)

Eighty-six-year-old Bear Stearns survived World War ii and the Great Depression, but collapsed practically overnight due to too much debt and risky investing. Before taking the risk management position at Bear Stearns, Mr. Alix had spent 10 years with the company, and eight years at Merrill Lynch, another massive investment bank that failed in September.

So now, as the U.S. economy faces what is likely one of its toughest crises ever, Mr. Alix—one of the many architects of the crisis—has been given the high-profile job of making sure the banking system becomes less prone to crisis.

“That’s incredible,” says James Cox, a Duke University law professor and securities law expert. “This is not reassuring. … What is there in this person’s experience and skill package” that makes him qualified for the job?

For the answer to that question, just ask U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Mr. Paulson is the former ceo of Goldman Sachs, another investment bank at the center of the Wall Street financial crisis. Mr. Paulson had the good fortune of leaving Goldman in 2006, just prior to the crisis. Paulson has since become notorious for his 2004 role in pressuring the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to eliminate the “net capital rule,” which required investment banks to keep higher reserves and limit risky leveraged investing. The elimination of this rule played a large role in the rapid demise of America’s investment banking sector.

How America expects to restore health and credibility to Wall Street by giving prestigious positions of influence and oversight to the very individuals who helped cause the problems in the first place is one of the mysteries investors are now grappling with.

The good news is that eventually, after all the fraud, corruption and greed is wiped out, America will return to financial health. You can read about this soon-coming time in the booklet The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like.