Elizabeth Warren has announced that she is opposing the nomination of Antonio Weiss as Treasury undersecretary, because he is a creature of the corrupt Wall Street establishment who arranged a huge “inversion” deal to avoid US taxes:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to oppose President Barack Obama’s nomination of Antonio Weiss, a Wall Street investment banker, to be Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, another sharp-elbowed move by the progressive movement’s most prominent leader.
Weiss, head of global investment banking at Lazard, is widely respected on Wall Street. But he advised on Burger King’s acquisition of Canadian doughnut chain Tim Horton’s, a so-called “tax inversion deal.” Defenders say the deals are commonplace across Wall Street and Weiss did not advise on the tax portion. Such arguments have not swayed the Massachusetts Democratic senator, a persistent Wall Street critic who appears headed to a leadership role in the next Congress.
A Warren adviser told POLITICO: “She is a no on Antonio Weiss. She was a Treasury official herself, she cares a lot about who is in the domestic finance role. It oversees Dodd-Frank implementation and other core economic policy-making.”
The adviser added that Warren “agrees with Senator Grassley that his past work with corporate inversions is a major issue, and she’s had growing concerns with the Administration being loaded with so many appointees from Wall Street rather than more people who would bring different perspectives.”
The adviser also argued that Weiss’ mergers and acquisitions background on Wall Street was not a good fit for the domestic finance post. “She also doesn’t believe that his investment banking background – which focuses almost entirely on Europe and on international mergers and acquisitions – puts him in a good position to oversee domestic issues like consumer protection and US financial regulation,” the adviser said.
The fact that Obama has nominated is a Wall Street type who is unsuited, and probably disinclined, to protect consumers from the banksters is not an unintentional oversight.
Neither it is Obama practicing eleventy dimensional chess.
If the past 6 years have shown anything, it is that Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have put the wealth and impunity of the financial sector above all other policy concerns.