Chris Hayes, the New York Times and Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin (among others) long ago raised serious concerns about President Obama naming 18-year Goldman Sachs veteran and deregulatory zealot Gary Gensler to head the Commodities Futures Trading Commission - the commission tasked with regulating derivatives trading. So it is with a bummed out, yet unsurprised sigh that I pass on this news item:
The Senate voted Tuesday to put Gary Gensler in charge of helping the Obama administration clamp down on financial firms that make risky bets in the derivatives market, less than a decade after he opposed doing so.
Gensler, a Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration, won Senate confirmation, 88-6...
Gensler, who was an assistant secretary of the Treasury Department and later undersecretary for domestic finance, worked with Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to keep credit default swaps away from regulation by the CFTC or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Adding insult to injury, the Associated Press doesn't even bother to mention Gensler's long record as a Goldman Sachs greedhead, instead portraying him as just a earnest and humble, if momentarily misguided, career public servant.
I'd say this is a telling vote - the U.S. Senate, chock full of millionaires, financial industry whores and other assorted foxes, could muster just 6 votes against putting a fellow fox in charge of the henhouse. Pretty sad...and sadly predictable.
