In an op-ed for the Huffington Post, US Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a caustic rebut that she would no longer support President Obama and his Wall Street cronies when the president nominates such people to important government positions, such as US Treasury Secretary and Undersecretary of Treasury.
The president has nominated a plethora of such people, showing his links to Wall Street in the process. Gene Sperling (Goldman Sachs) – Director of the National Economic Council Jacob Lew (Citigroup) – Treasury Secretary Stanley Fisher (Citigroup) – Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve William Daley (J.P. Morgan Chase) – Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (Wasserstein Perella) – Chief of Staff Nathan Sheets (Citigroup) – Treasury Under Sec. for International Affairs Stefan Selig (Bank of America) – Under Sec. for International Trade at the Dept of Commerce These are the people that help to rig the economic and political game for the 1 percent and against the 99 percent.
Below is what Warren wrote:
I believe President Obama deserves deference in picking his team, and I’ve generally tried to give him that. But enough is enough. Last Wednesday, President Obama announced his nomination of Antonio Weiss to serve as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department. This is a position that oversees Dodd-Frank implementation and a wide range of banking and economic policymaking issues, including consumer protection. So who is Antonio Weiss? He’s the head of global investment banking for the financial giant Lazard. He has spent the last 20 years of his career at Lazard — most of it advising on international mergers and acquisitions. That raises the first issue. Weiss has spent most of his career working on international transactions — from 2001 to 2009 he lived and worked in Paris — and now he’s being asked to run domestic finance at Treasury. Neither his background nor his professional experience makes him qualified to oversee consumer protection and domestic regulatory functions at the Treasury. As someone who has spent my career focused on domestic economic issues, including a stint of my own at the Treasury Department, I know how important these issues are and how much the people in Treasury can shape policies. I also know that there are a lot of people who have spent their careers focused on these issues, and Weiss isn’t one of them.
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