Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Like This Treasury Nominee. Here's Why.
Last year, liberal darling Sen. Elizabeth Warren helped doom President Barack Obama's effort to nominate former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to head the Federal Reserve. Now the Democratic senator from Massachusetts is leading the charge to derail another Wall Street-friendly Obama nominee: investment banker Antonio Weiss. Last month, the president tapped Weiss to become the Treasury Department's undersecretary for domestic finance, a position with immense power over big banks. If confirmed, consumer advocates fear, Weiss may not go to bat for average Americans while helping craft banking rules and battling Republican-led efforts to gut financial reform.
Weiss' job at Treasury would include overseeing the implementation of Wall Street reforms and consumer protection measures. He would help shape banking rules that the Treasury Department and other financial regulators must finalize over the next two years. And he would be in the room with congressional leaders and administration officials negotiating over GOP proposals that would water down financial reforms.
Weiss has spent the past 20 years at Lazard, an asset management firm that advises companies on mergers and acquisitions. He is now the firm's head of investment banking. Warren contends that Weiss is not the right man for the job because he has no experience in banking regulation and is too cozy with the financial sector. And she is leading the effort to take him down. In November, Warren vowed to vote against Weiss' confirmation, and her political operation blasted out an email ginning up opposition to him. In an op-ed in the Huffington Post last month, she said the Weiss nomination "tells people that whatever goes wrong in this economy, the Wall Street banks will be protected first."
A source familiar with the administration's thinking says that Weiss' background does not determine what policy positions he may take if confirmed. But since he has little regulatory experience and most of his relationships are with people in finance, a Democratic aide tells Mother Jones, those are the people he will likely listen to.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on how Weiss' connections to Wall Street might conflict with his mandate to protect consumers, noting only that "Antonio Weiss is a highly qualified nominee and we look forward to the Senate's consideration of his nomination and swift confirmation." Weiss did not respond to a request for comment.
More here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/elizabeth-warren-antonio-weiss-treasury
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