rssMore Wall Street Influence Arrives at Treasury
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 10:16 am
- 2 Comments
From the foxes-guarding-the-henhouse department, Neal Wolin, who served as general counsel to the Treasury during the final years of the Clinton administration, was confirmed by the Senate last night to be deputy Treasury secretary under Tim Geithner. The approval came by unanimous consent.
There’s little doubt the department could use the help. In the midst of the deepest recession in decades, a number of top posts within the agency remain vacant — a condition that has stalled a series of policy decisions, according to recent reports.
Still, there are a few questions circling around the choice of Wolin to be Geithner’s right hand man.
As some observers pointed out earlier this year, Wolin was among the drafters of the 1999 legislation that effectively tore down the barriers between commercial banks, investment houses and insurance companies, leading to the creation of those too-big-to-fail entities that recently tanked the global economy.
Also of note, Wolin was previously head of a property management branch of The Hartford Financial Services Group, the insurance giant that just last week became eligible for $3.4 billion in federal bailout money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which is run by Treasury.
Whether that constitutes a conflict of interest or prerequisite experience is for others to decide.
2 Comments
Comment posted May 19, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
The USA is a country of ethnic diversity yet the administrators and deputies in our US Treasury Dept and Tim Geithner mostly display the homogeneous demographics of Israel. Perhaps affirmative action is needed for the other Americans who make up 98.5% of the USA and should be a requirement in our government to offset the obvious racism, favoritism, and cronyism that exists for the other 1.5%.
What is even more troubling is that these officials all have ties to Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and the financier sector whose greed and incompetence created our current economic woes. If the US Treasury is looking for competence it certainly shouldn't be taking their leadership from the current crop.
Comment posted May 20, 2009 @ 3:03 am
The USA is a country of ethnic diversity yet the administrators and deputies in our US Treasury Dept and Tim Geithner mostly display the homogeneous demographics of Israel. Perhaps affirmative action is needed for the other Americans who make up 98.5% of the USA and should be a requirement in our government to offset the obvious favoritism and cronyism that exists for the other 1.5%.
What is even more troubling is that these officials all have ties to Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and the financier sector whose greed and incompetence created our current economic woes. If the US Treasury is looking for competence it certainly shouldn't be taking their leadership from the current crop.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
