It’s been a long time since the left has found the will and the clout to do something that smacks of an ideological temper tantrum, but that’s how I feel about their successful effort to block the nomination of Antonio Weiss to be Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department.
It really does remind me of the excesses we see from the right on a daily basis, where scalps are sought without regard to specifics.
On the one hand, this strikes me as a Captain Renault-type moment, where progressives are “Shocked, shocked” that people with experience in high finance are running the nation’s finances. On the other hand, it does represent a major shot across the bow of the whole financial industry, indicating that leading members of the Democratic Party see them as illegitimate and almost as the enemy, and that they feel strongly enough about it to stand up to their own president and tell him to go pound sand.
And this was not just a tantrum on Sens. Warren and Sanders’ part, because a good part of the professional left got involved, including some of my friends and former employers.
Progressive group CREDO rallied its members against the nomination, drawing 160,000 signatures for one anti-Weiss petition sent to senators and coordinating more than 1,000 calls to the White House. Other progressive groups, including Democracy for America, also pitched in.
“President Obama did the right thing by listening to the demands of hundreds of thousands of supporters from his progressive base,” said CREDO deputy political director Murshed Zaheed. “He must fill this appointment with someone with a track record of fighting for Main Street, not Wall Street.”
I served as a strategic consultant for Democracy for America and I became friends with Murshed when he was serving in Harry Reid’s office, and later on when we closed down bars in Austin during the Netroots Nations conference there. But I wouldn’t have advised them to oppose this nomination for the simple reason that there really isn’t anything specifically objectionable about Mr. Weiss that hasn’t also been true about virtually every Treasury nominee since Alexander Hamilton ran the place. Why pick on this dude?
But, then, they picked a fight that they could win, and they did win. And they sent a message that is worth sending. Here’s how Sen. Sanders put it.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that while he has “no personal animosity toward Mr. Weiss … I am very glad he withdrew his nomination. The president needs economic advisors who do not come from Wall Street. In fact, he needs advisors prepared to stand up to Wall Street.”
Sanders doesn’t have any personal animosity towards Weiss because this wasn’t personal at all. Weiss was the victim of the left suddenly deciding to test out a principle, and he was just the unlucky card that came up out of the deck at the wrong time.
Now the White House will presumably go out and try to find a recruit to serve as the No. 3 at Treasury (on domestic finance) who has never worked in high finance. After all, that appears to be the only really essential requirement for this job now.
Meanwhile, Mr. Weiss will settle into the unconfirmed job as Secretary Lew’s counselor.
Mission accomplished?
Maybe.
But now what?
Meanwhile, Mr. Weiss will settle into the unconfirmed job as Secretary Lew’s counselor.
What is this supposed to mean? Is he quitting Lazard and will now draw a paycheck from the taxpayers? What stopped him from “counseling” Lew before? Is he still getting that $20 million “exit payment”?
From the article, typos and all:
So Weiss will drawing a paycheck, though maybe less than he would have gotten via confirmation. He’ll probably get that large “exit bonus” too.
Of course.
The “temper tantrum” was exactly correct. Regulatory decision-makers who have worked or will work for the industry they regulate have profound conflicts of interests and cannot normally work for the benefit of the country. The decision-makers have to come from somewhere else. The high finance folks should be advisers to the decision-makers, not the ones with authority themselves.
Since there are already signs of a new bubble and banks learning nothing I’d say we have to start somewhere. If nothing else winning together unifies the left a bit more on the issue.
You’ve spent years complaining that the left is afraid of exercising power, and is wary of acting like The Establishment, and when they do, you’re unimpressed.
This is what power looks like. Small, ugly baby steps.
It’s not that he is “unimpressed,” Steggies. He’s just changed his mind. He wants the forces that have put the U.S. in its present state to continue in power. He thinks that they are the best and brightest that we have and that they will learn from their mistakes. Could be, but I don’t think so. I think that he is wrong.
We shall see, soon enough. Unless a real sea change occurs in the political landscape over the next year or so…a distinct possibility, but still quite slim…we will have the same corporate-owned and operated politicians running the same UniParty federal government. Four more years of the last eight’s mistakes? I dread the consequences.
As of now, the current UniParty president has announced that he will hold a summit to fight violent extremism in DC on Feb 18th.
Mark your calendar. My bet? That’ll be the day the next level of the PermaWar War will officially begin, this time on the new new bad guys, ISIS.
Watch.
Boots on the ground.
Lots of them.
Watch.
AG
The prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, stated that France is at war with Islamic fundamentalism. So, there you have it. Even if Obama couldn’t be bothered to go to Paris, you can be sure that Valls will not return the compliment and will personally milk Feb. 18 for all it’s worth. And by the way, in case you missed it, Valls’ boss, Hollande, remarked that Paris is the capital of the world. I wonder what Obama thinks of that?
Obama could care less about what they think as long as they stay in line with the U.S./multinational corporate economic imperialist line. Which they will, because they too are bought and sold. You want to see Obama or any other PermaGov functionaries “care” about what their
allies…errrr, ahhhh… co-conspiritors think? Wait until one of them starts to make nice with the Russians. Until then it will just be business as usual. Watch.AG
Curiously I was just reading about something like that. See http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40672.htm, Finian Cunningham, NATO general secretary Stoltenberg ‘called on Moscow to be ‘an ally in the fight against terrorism’. What could that possible indicate?
Obviously Hollande and Valls have already fallen into line. That was my point. Evidently I wasn’t clear. Instead of pencils a lot of bombs will soon start falling.
Way to straddle, Booman. Way to go. One foot in the so-called “progressive” camp, the other w/Obama, HRC etc.
Change your bookmark logo.
It now reads:
Truth in advertising? (An oxymoron if ever I saw one, of course.)
How about:
It has a nice ring to it. Give it a try.
Later…
AG
So President Obama flips off Warren and Sanders by appointing Weiss as Lew’s counselor.
That says a lot of distressing things about the remaining two years of this administration and the positioning of the Democrats in Congress.
Albert Gallatin was one of the better Secretaries of Treasury in part because he mastered what it took for public finance and understood how it differed from private finance, a distinction that recent Secretaries of the Treasury ignore.
What disturbed critics most about the Weiss nomination was that it continued the failed policies of six years of handing decision-making not just to persons of high finance but persons with experience and loyalties to only one or two firms. That the White House, if not the President himself, persists in this policy shows how out depth this administration has been on economic issues.
This was not a win for Warren and Sanders; it was a slapdown not unlike the previous slapdowns by the White House of progressives.
The Democratic Party continues to separate itself from the demos. And we have significant proof that bankers won’t turn out voters for Democrats.
Meanwhile we’re asked to mourn poor, poor mistimed, misaligned Mr. Weiss’s awful fate at the hands of politics.
The problem is the assumption that having worked in high finance is a requirement for a Treasury job. Given the track record of treasurers and financial officers for states and municipalities who were seduced by the bond agents, familiarity with exotic financial instruments seems to be the worst qualification for Treasury staff unless they are writing legislation to end them. But if someone comes in from private industry to write legislation, the current employment climate almost ensures that they will write it to maximize their post-government-service income.
Sanders’s and Warren’s campaign was nothing but a Hail Mary to try to attract attention to the failure at Treasury and to their non-campaigns. The results show that it failed.
“This was not a win for Warren and Sanders; it was a slapdown not unlike the previous slapdowns by the White House of progressives.”
That would only be true if the powers of the two positions (Undersecretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department, and a counselor for Treasury Secretary Lew) were identical. They do not appear to be identical, at all. It appears Weiss will have much less power because of this win.
The counselor to the Secretary has more power in many ways than the undersecretaries. It’s just a different kind of power, but it’s a kind that has as much or more consequence for policy.
You write:
You are too forgiving, Tarheel. They are not “out of their depth” at all; they are just adhering to previous promises made in order to get elected.
AG
OK, it was a slapdown, but a feeble slapdown. so who cares? It was a victory for Warren, Sanders, and all people of good sense and good will.
But this is really on target:
“The problem is the assumption that having worked in high finance is a requirement for a Treasury job. … familiarity with exotic financial instruments seems to be the worst qualification for Treasury staff unless they are writing legislation to end them. But if someone comes in from private industry to write legislation, … they will write it to maximize their post-government-service income.”
Therefore the best requirement for a Treasury job should be familiarity with exotic financial instruments plus a background in financial regulation. We need lots of dedicated civil servants with those qualifications.
Then I guess you REALLY opposed Democrats’ opposition to John Brennan the first time he was nominated. I mean, he not only got kept on as a national security advisor after his first nomination was defeated, but he was nominated again and confirmed. So Flexing those muscles back then was pointless? I mean, that’s the only conclusion I can draw from his post. And I know you opposed Brennan then and oppose him now. Why is it easy to understand in that realm yet can’t be translated here?
As far as what’s next, how about opposing Lynch’s nomination?
Did Antonio Weiss serve in an organization that tortured people?
My objection to John Brennan wasn’t that he was a trained intelligence professional and that the CIA shouldn’t be headed by trained intelligence professionals.
The objection to Weiss is that he worked in high finance. That’s really it. It’s not about anything in particular except the idea that people from Wall Street and the finance and baking industries shouldn’t serve in the Treasury Department just as a matter of principle.
I have called for more diversity of background in the past, myself, and would certainly welcome it. And maybe this is the best available way to advance that goal.
It’s still basically a tantrum used to raise profiles and money that doesn’t really care about Weiss at all. No one really cares that he’s got the job anyway (basically), because they got to look good.
But Hillary Clinton is going to do the opposite of following up on this. She is going to mend fences, and she’ll actually be somewhat justified in doing so because the Dems just gave an overly broad middle finger to the people with all the money.
No.
He did worse.
He served in an organization that was complicit in the financing of the PermaWar/PermaGov as it now stands, including the CIA and other torturers. “War crimes” ought to be considered no more despicable than are economic crimes. Von Clausewitz’s statement “War is the continuation of politics by other means” stands quite true today. Politics is now corporate economics, and the servants of that system…all of them, from the President right on down to the most petty clerks at huge financial institutions…are guilty of economic criminality.
Were the architects of this little skirmish looking to raise their profiles in some way?
Yes. Of course they were.
Was it honorably intended?
I believe it was, myself.
There is little “honor” remaining in the halls of the federal government. Most of its functionaries are just glorified versions of the usual city health and building inspectors, all with their hands out, all on the take.
Somebody did something right. You can only straddle so far, Booman. Eventually some tendons are going to give out.
Stand up straight again.
You be bettah off.
The next train may be on your tracks.
AG
It’s not just that he worked in high finance. The community banking sector (not exactly a bunch of DFHs) strongly believe that high finance is a poor background for the sensitivities required in this particular position.
This is explained very clearly in Camden Fine’s position paper here:
https:/camfine.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/antonio-weiss-not-right-for-treasury-post
“It is only the second time in 30 years the ICBA has publicly opposed a nomination, Mr. Fine said.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/11/19/community-bankers-join-opposition-to-treasury-nominee-anto
nio-weiss/
A must-read yesterday by Annie Laurie goes into the back story behind L’Affaire Weiss. It does not support your thesis. She presents the Weiss nomination as part of a pattern that includes the repeal of “the section of Dodd-Frank … designed to lower risks in exactly the area where the big banks got into trouble” (Elizabeth Warren.) Particularly interesting is the next part of the interview in which Warren explains why many in the financial sector do not think that repeal was a good idea. (Which further contextualizes the opposition of the Independent Community Bankers to the nomination.)
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/01/13/tuesday-evening-open-thread-knowing-ones-strengths/
Well, what else are Democratic Senators supposed to do in this Congress? We already know we’re in for two more years of paralysis, so the best the Democrats can do is to make some noise. Blocking Weiss may be symbolic, but it does give Warren and Sanders a chance to highlight the issues they care about.
Yep. Small victory, the equivalent maybe of blocking a 3-pt field goal or maybe just a 1-pt PAT, but we have to start somewhere. And it might help build confidence on the left that we still matter and can be influential.
Now if we could only find some forceful spokesmen/women to go after Obama on his many neoliberal/neocon national security personnel choices, the ones who are apparently leading O by the nose into some unwise and uncourageous policy decisions.
You say that the successful blocking of Antonio Weiss for Undersecretary of the Domestic Finance was an “ideological temper tantrum” of the left reminiscent of “the excesses we see from the right on a daily basis, where scalps are sought without regard to specifics.” And it’s been a long time since this has happened.
Actually, something similar happened not very long ago, when the nominee for head of the Federal Reserve, Obama’s favorite Larry Summers, was forced to withdraw his name (Sept. 15, 2013).
Your comment at the time was telling:
“I don’t think I ever wrote a word about Larry Summers”
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2010/9/21/181018/020
I don’t think so either, Booman, but just to remind you, the main reason for the opposition to Summers was that he was a champion of financial deregulation, just as in the case of Weiss.
That was followed by the appointment of his main rival Janet Yellen, which many had predicted would never happen.
Deregulation of the derivatives market and the repeal of Glass-Steagall are widely recognized as the root causes of the financial crash of 2008. Opposition to Summers was bipartisan:
http://mic.com/articles/60365/larry-summers-so-reviled-republicans-back-more-liberal-janet-yellen-fo
r-fed-chair
Second, your argument that it is stupid to expect anyone but Wall Street types to be able to fill that Treasury position is simplistic. Rather, it is stupid to expect anybody but EXPERTS IN ECONOMICS AND FINANCE to fill that position. Not all economists and bankers are “Wall Street types”, if we mean by “Wall Street types” supporters of Rubin, Summers, deregulation of derivatives, etc. That these people are running Treasury now is exactly the problem, it is not some inherent definition of the job that cannot be other than it is. It is a political problem, and the campaign against Weiss was publicly political and very well carried out.
Note that the Independent Community BANKERS of America came out publicly against Antonio Weiss:
http://baselinescenario.com/2014/12/17/elizabeth-warren-and-the-independent-community-bankers-of-ame
rica-are-right-antonio-weiss-should-not-become-undersecretary-for-domestic-finance/
I understand the concept of emoprogs and left wing, anti-Obama hissy fits, and I do not like them any more than you do. However, opposition to deregulation fiends like Summers, Geithner, Rubin, Weiss, is not in that category. It has much broader political support and is directed at some of the core problems of our unbalanced, overfinancialized economy.
I’ve argued in the past that we should send different people to work at the Treasury Department, which is basically exactly what this fight was all about.
In that sense, I fully understand it.
I just understand why Weiss was a problem.
I just followed your link and the objection pretty much came down to:
It’s a shabby way to treat someone and I don’t think it accomplished much.
I mean, that whole article is just a guilt by association smear job and I defy you to deny it.
Granted, I’m a New Jersey-raised progressive who isn’t some kind of anti-Wall Street prairie populist, but I can tell the difference between opposing Summers and opposing Weiss. In one case, we were going after the bear and in the other we were just firing bearshot blindly into the woods hoping we hit a worthy target and scared off anything scary that might be lurking there.
the core issue on this one, which to me is about appointing foxes to guard henhouses, a la Bush/Cheney.
What Wall Street needs overseeing it is a regulator, not yet another fox. I see that as the whole point of Warren’s opposition. I liked the suggestion somewhere up-thread of a securities attorney (or something along those lines) for the position. I.e., it needs to be someone adversarial, not someone who views the regulated as a colleague.
Within this context, “scar[ing] off anything scary that might be lurking there” seems a feature, not a bug.
Exactly.
I bet the administration can find a good securities attorney to fill that position. Someone who has taken on Wall Street in some way and come away successful.
All we ask is to have the people run Wall Street again, and not the other way around.
Who was the savvy guy who worked with Warren? He was finishing the term of another Senator?
You must be thinking of Ted Kaufman, who was senator from Delaware 2009-2010, filling Joe Biden’s position.
Yes, he is a very good man.
“As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kaufman introduced bipartisan legislation with Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to strengthen tools and increase resources available to federal prosecutors to combat financial fraud. The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 (FERA) was signed into law by President Obama on May 20, 2009.[22]
“Kaufman had sought to further restore confidence in the U.S. financial markets by introducing bipartisan legislation to address abusive short selling and other market manipulation.[23] Kaufman urged the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to consider reinstating the “uptick rule” – which aids market stability and hampers price discovery. He gave multiple floor statements and written numerous letters to the agency with Senate colleagues on this issue, as well as the need for a pre-borrow requirement or a “hard locate” system for short sales.[24]
“In 2010, Kaufman, along with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), introduced an amendment to the then-proposed Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, known as the Brown-Kaufman amendment. The amendment would have limited the nondeposit liabilities of banks to two percent of gross domestic product, effectively curtailing the size to which banks could grow.[25] Kaufman stated on the Senate floor his intention to recapture the spirit of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed in 1933, which had been rescinded in 1999.[25] The amendment failed in a Senate vote of 61 to 33 on May 6, 2010.[26]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaufman
“ideological temper tantrum”? Well haven’t we just spent the last 6 years and this last election learning that ideological temper tantrums work? I’d like to see more of them.
they work on the right, they don’t work for us because it just continues to drive down turn out which means we lose
A latecomer to the whole regulatory scheme is John Reed, the last chairman of Citibank, before it became Citicorp. After making a buttload of money off of unregulated financial markets, and watching what Atrios called Big Shitpile nearly melt down the economic system, Reed came around to the need for regulation in the financial sector, and particularly for some of the old Glass-Steagall regulations to be reinstituted, and get that firewall between investment and finance rebuilt.
His analogy went something like this: Why does a car have brakes? Many people will say, “So you can stop the car,” but that’s not really right. A car has brakes so you can go fast. How fast are you going to go in a car that doesn’t have brakes? Would you even get in a car that doesn’t have brakes? Similarly, the FIRE industry needs a strong regulatory framework.
Appointees who don’t recognize a basic bit of good governance really shouldn’t be in government. (They probably shouldn’t be in a position of power in the financial industry, but that’s another issue.)
Obama could care less about what they think as long as they stay in line with the U.S./multinational corporate economic imperialist line. Which they will, because they too are bought and sold. You want to see Obama or any other PermaGov functionaries “care” about what their
allies…errrr, ahhhh… co-conspiritors think? Wait until one of them starts to make nice with the Russians. Until then it will just be business as usual. Watch.AG
This comment was supposed to be a reply to Quentin above. I will reprint it there.
Sorry.
AG
Sad to see “If the Tsar only knew…” posts.
In the meantime, a gift to oil companies that may impact the Keystone Pipeline rationale. Obama has just circumvented, in spirit at least, the crude oil export ban by relaxing it to allow light oil exports. This could include fracked crude with minimal refining, the so-called oil condensate.
Anyone seen this reported?
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Business/International/2015/Jan-05/283019-obama-sets-stage-for-debate-ov
er-us-oil-export-ban.ashx
could you explain what would be the impact on Keystone debate?
Allowing export of our unrefined oil may allow domestic prices for gas to rise. All of Keystone crude is going offshore, making for more resentment that we are incurring all of the downside, with little to no upside.
thanks, I’m still not unravelling this. isn’t the Keystone gunk foreign, hence, an import not an export? and would be refined when/ if exported from the USA? and is that gunk considered “crude”? so what’t the relationship between our exporting crude and permitting the pipeline? just to make ppl happier about Canada?
They are not treating it that way, unless it goes to a US refinery. In fact, it will not even have the tax applied to build a remediation fund in case of spills, from what I can discover.
The information from a recent Oil Change International report explains how Valero, one of the top beneficiaries of Keystone XL pipeline will be exporting the Canadian oil they receive. (China, is my understanding.)
So why are we doing it? Why are we allowing our crude to be exported (under the fig leaf)?