Hillary Clinton is about to hire Gary Gensler, former top federal financial regulator and strong advocate for strict Wall Street rules, as CFO of her campaign.
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
After reading the recent TIME 100 list and Hillary Clinton's praise for Elizabeth Warren, one passage stood out:
Elizabeth Warren never lets us forget that the work of taming Wall Street’s irresponsible risk taking and reforming our financial system is far from finished. And she never hesitates to hold powerful people’s feet to the fire: bankers, lobbyists, senior government officials and, yes, even presidential aspirants.
So, here Hillary Clinton makes these points about Wall Street and the entire financial system:
1. Wall Street has been taking irresponsible risks
2. Wall Street needs taming
3. Reform of the financial system is far from finished
Related, Hillary Clinton also made reference to income inequality, as it relates to Wall Street, at a recent stop in Iowa when she stated:
"There’s something wrong when hedge fund managers pay less in taxes than nurses or the truckers I saw on I-80. I think it’s fair to say that if you look across the country, the deck is stacked in favor of those already at the top."
To those points the pending hire of Gary Gensler, former top federal Wall Street regulator and strong Wall Street critic, could be a move to portend things to come in regards to the campaign platform and agenda.
From the article:
Hillary Clinton will bring on one of Wall Street's fiercest critics to oversee her campaign's finances
Hillary Clinton is planning to name Gary Gensler, a former top federal financial regulator and strong advocate for strict Wall Street rules, as the chief financial officer of her campaign, according to a Democrat familiar with the decision.
Gensler, in his role as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was a leading player in the drafting and then implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act, the financial rules that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010 in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression....
Though a former partner at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Gensler became a champion for strict new Wall Street regulation and was viewed by financial reform advocates as one of their top allies throughout his time as chairman of the CFTC. In his role at the agency, Gensler pushed hard for rules transforming one of the most lucrative parts of Wall Street before the crisis: derivatives, the products investor Warren Buffett famously labeled "financial weapons of mass destruction.’’ In frequent speeches, public and private meetings at the agency and testimony to Congress, he used his nearly five-year tenure in the job to seek dozens of rules reining in Wall Street’s control of the $700 trillion market.
The hire is for campaign CFO, the person who oversees the campaigns' financial dealings. Still, it is a senior position, and he surely will have her ear on a host of issues, and having a major Wall Street critic and watch dog in her ear is a good thing for Progressives. It is a nice addition to the campaign team.
Stricter Wall Street regulation and reform of the banking industry seem to be the focus of the Hillary Clinton campaign early on, and this hire looks to be another step in fleshing out that agenda.