Once Again President Obama Chooses a Fox to Guard the Henhouse. [View all]

Once Again President Obama Chooses a Fox to Guard the Henhouse.

President Obama’s pick to be Treasury Under Secretary for Domestic Finance is Antonio Weiss. His new job would be to oversee the domestic financial system—including the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform act, and consumer protection. He is currently the global head of investment banking at Lazard Ltd, a firm that has put together several major inversion deals. Why is this significant?
“Since 2003, more than thirty-five American companies have dodged taxes through similar deals, which are known as “corporate inversions.””

A number of progressive Senators, lead by Sen Warren have reservations. "Warren has a number of problems with Weiss. The first is the fact that his career has been focused on international transactions. “Neither his background nor his professional experience makes him qualified to oversee consumer protection and domestic regulatory functions at the Treasury,” she wrote. The second is that he’s tied up in the corporate-inversion trend, which, as she notes, the Obama administration has criticized and tried to stop."
Sen Warren further stated, “It’s time for the Obama administration to loosen the hold that Wall Street banks have over economic policy making.”

Sen Warren’s third concern is “about the fox guarding the henhouse. She ticked off a long list of people with close ties to the financial industry who now serve in high-level economic-policy positions in the Obama administration, including Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and US Trade Representative Michael Froman. Letting former Wall Streeters roost in top government perches “tells people that one—and only one—point of view will dominate economic policymaking. It tells people that whatever goes wrong in this economy, the Wall Street banks will be protected first,” she wrote.”

Read more at The Nation Magazine - http://www.thenation.com/blog/191289/next-big-fight-between-progressives-and-wall-street-dems