Because we can never reward failure often enough:
White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew remains the leading contender for the Treasury job, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the private talks.Because Lew’s experience in financial markets is thin, Obama may seek to name a Wall Street executive as deputy Treasury secretary, the people said.
While Lew, 57, worked as a managing director for Citigroup from July 2006 until the end of 2008, he’s spent most of his career in government.
So we're going to promote a guy who worked as a director for Citi when the company was crashing the housing market and hustling the government for bailout money, and another guy who's maybe-sorta just like him, only with more experience in market-crashing and bailout-hustling. That's a hell of a policy sea change, brother.
I've got another idea: why don't we just implode the Treasury Building in Washington, and relocate all the employees to some sparkling new digs? We might as well, considering that's where our economic policy is being formulated these days. As an alternative---and I realize this is a totally unserious proposal---perhaps the President would consider appointing a Treasury secretary who has no experience in the financial markets but who is a credentialed economist who understands how markets operate, and who also has a greater interest in seeing that existing banking and securities laws are being enforced than in foaming runways for a bunch of failed businessmen. We call these people "public servants" for a reason, so how about appointing people who genuinely want to, like, serve the public?
---Baron V
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