Trouble for another Obama Treasury appointee?
posted at 2:20 pm on March 31, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Barack Obama may have trouble getting his #2 at Treasury confirmed, and not necessarily from Republicans. Neal Wolin worked on the Treasury team that drafted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which Democrats like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd blame for the economic meltdown. From the Left, Greg Sargent has noticed the connection, but has begun rehabilitating the legislation:
Tim Geithner’s new nominee for number two at the Treasury Department, Neal Wolin, played a key role in drafting legislation in the late 1990s deregulating the banking system, a former Treasury Department official confirms to us.
The law that Wolin helped draft has been blamed by some critics for easing up regulatory pressure on huge financial institutions, tangentially helping create today’s mess — and his role drafting it could come under questioning at his upcoming confirmation hearings.
Our reporter, Ryan Derousseau, came across Wolin’s role in researching our big profile of Wolin at WhoRunsGov.com. Stuart Eizenstat, a deputy Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, confirmed that as Treasury’s general council at the time, Wolin “provided the technical and legal drafting” for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
As Ryan writes, the Act hasn’t been directly blamed for today’s meltdown. But it did pave the way for the birth of huge financial companies like Citigroup that were deemed “too big to fail” when their mortgage bets went belly-up and the credit market evaporated. The government, of course, had to bail out these institutions with billions in taxpayer dollars.
That’s quite a change in tone, if the Left picks it up from Sargent. In the weeks following the crash, Democrats used Phil Gramm as their scapegoat, shifting the blame from the heavy government intervention in the market to the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act. Democrats to this day insist that the crash came from “deregulation”, and the GLBA had been Exhibit A for that defense of the Community Reinvestment Act and Congressional mandates to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy and securitize subprime loans, which actually created the false bubble and crash.
Wolin has other problems, which I noted in January when Wolin first joined the Obama administration as Obama’s chief legal counsel on the economy. Wolin ran The Hartford’s Financial Services Group, and bought a thrift in Florida in order to get TARP money. Under Obama’s lobbying rules, Wolin should have nothing to do with Treasury’s bailout activities, which calls into question what Wolin will do at Treasury. Park Tim Geithner’s car?
Republicans ought to go after Wolin when he appears for his confirmation hearing. Having Democrats on the committee defend his work on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act will be quite entertaining, and could help kill the popular meme on the Left that Gramm is responsible at all for meltdown. I suspect a few Democrats may already be wondering what Obama was thinking in pushing Wolin into this position.
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Kind of like communism was good for the youth, religions, and the artists.
acyl72 on May 22, 2013 at 8:45 PM
Surprised there wasn’t a “donate button” at the bottom of her webpage.
can_con on May 22, 2013 at 8:48 PM
Congratulations class of 2013, you managed to graduate without learning critical thinking skills. You have been programmed to be compliant to the state from which all your needs and desires will come. Don’t bother looking for meaningful employment, as we have ruined any chance of you being independent and self determined. Everything you say and do can and will be used against you if you show any signs of resistance to the state. You will not enjoy any privacy. Welcome to Amerika.
tom daschle concerned on May 22, 2013 at 8:51 PM
I will gladly
payrob you Tuesday for thehamburgerDeath Panels you buy for me today.—————— Joe Mengele Sebelius, Death Panels Kommandant.
viking01 on May 22, 2013 at 8:51 PM
Um..I just have to comment…pre-existing condition of acne?? WTF
BeachBum on May 22, 2013 at 8:51 PM
Great job kids, you’ll be excited to know being dependent on us is now easier than ever!
rightmind on May 22, 2013 at 8:52 PM
I’m tired of this BS meme about “robbing our childrens’ futures”. This is simple thievery, and we’re being stolen from NOW through inflation, and means nothing to most voters…they’re used to living in debt and the numbers are so staggering it simply doesn’t compute for them. Oh, and…they believe that the Wizards of Wall Street and the Gov’t surely know what they’re doing and will fix everything.
So, it doesn’t mean anything to enough people to make a difference at the polls. Besides, even if it did, how much more would the GOP get is into debt? They’ve done it before.
Dr. ZhivBlago on May 22, 2013 at 8:52 PM
There’s an old joke that goes, “I want to live long enough to be a burden to my kids.”
Obamacare is going to guarantee I am, along with a lot of other people my age and older.
Liam on May 22, 2013 at 8:54 PM
Not if your parents lose their employer provided insurance and get thrown on the exchanges.
Curtiss on May 22, 2013 at 8:56 PM
Nurse Diesel was born 60 years too late. She would have made a marvelous Nazi and Associate of Dr. Mengele. Pity…
/SPARC
glcinpdx on May 22, 2013 at 8:57 PM
Nurse Diesel was born 60 years too late. She would have made a marvelous Nazi and Associate of Dr. Mengele. Pity…
/SARC
glcinpdx on May 22, 2013 at 8:58 PM
I was at a party this past weekend, a rather daper young man of 80 years told a “funny but true” joke.
He asked at Social Security how he was going to get back all that he had paid in. The lady looked up his numbers, and told him with interest, it would take 32 more years to pay him back.
He looked me straight in the eye and said
If you knew Don, you could believe that.
JusDreamin on May 22, 2013 at 9:05 PM
Of course you can get Plan B at age 15.
You can drive a car at 16.
You can vote at age 18.
You can legally drink at 21.
You can serve in the military.
But when it comes to healthcare, you can mooch off your parents until you’re old enough that you probably have a family of your own. Here’s to being a responsible adult or something.
Happy Nomad on May 22, 2013 at 9:14 PM
Good if you are going to be a government worker.
Guess there might be some openings in the IRS soon…
ProfShadow on May 22, 2013 at 9:15 PM
I doubt any but the most serious and earnest of young Democrats are actually going to find their way to the HHS blog. I mean, how many here even knew there was one? I didn’t.
Even if they are aware of her statement, all Sebelius’ words won’t mean a thing when members of the class of 2013 can’t find work or can only find part-time work thanks to Obamacare or when they see differences in their paycheck because of Obamacare.
INC on May 22, 2013 at 9:17 PM
How many parents will subsidize their “kids” until they’re 26? I won’t.
Charlemagne on May 22, 2013 at 9:17 PM
Somehow, though, I can’t feel sorry for these college kids who, their first time voting, voted for Obama. And for those who voted for him twice. And let their liberal parents who voted Obama suffer just like the rest of us.
While I deplore this law and wish it be repealed, I’m going to enjoy seeing liberals suffer for the laws they wanted but didn’t always have to heed. Now, for the first time, liberals have to pay, too.
“Welcome to the party, pal!”
Liam on May 22, 2013 at 9:20 PM
I have little faith in the young. They get their news from Colbert and Stewart and couldn’t tell you where Canada is on a map let alone intelligently explain international affairs. Many of them will happily sign up for that “free” healthcare.
Happy Nomad on May 22, 2013 at 9:21 PM
Maybe she can explain why she broke the law & why she was extorting money from organization she was ‘lover’s….it will give her some practice before she has to do it before CONGRESS!
easyt65 on May 22, 2013 at 9:23 PM
Well good for you! I knew that the financial support was cut off the minute I graduated from college. Of course, I had a job and wasn’t back in my childhood race car bed because of the lousy economy.
Happy Nomad on May 22, 2013 at 9:24 PM
Well, remember that campaign ad. They wanted their first time to be special.
Happy Nomad on May 22, 2013 at 9:26 PM
Well, they gave it up to a psycho, and he’ll forever be like a stalker.
Liam on May 22, 2013 at 9:30 PM
“You vill drink zee Obamakare, und you vill enchoy it! Ja?”
slickwillie2001 on May 22, 2013 at 9:32 PM
What year did Sebelius run in the Kentucky Derby?
bw222 on May 22, 2013 at 9:34 PM
Yeah, it’s like a Lifetime Movie Network script.
Innocent happy young people graduate from college. Before you know it they’re enrolled in Obamacare, have to trade their cool phones in for Obamaphones because they don’t have any income. They turn on the television to see Mooch lecturing them to eat their vegetables. It is as if they’ve lost their real families and been adopted by the Obamas. Or more accurately they’ve been recruited into the radical left-wing party of which Obama is the cult leader.
Happy Nomad on May 22, 2013 at 9:41 PM
Hah! Trick question. Sebelius isn’t a mudder and got scratched before the race for fear that the track conditions would result in a broken leg. Thus eliminating any chance of stud fees.
Happy Nomad on May 22, 2013 at 10:00 PM
Chickens coming home to roost.
.Left wing professorial nuts in colleges teach kids socialism.
.left wing indoctrinated college freaks elect Obama president.
.Obama appoints whackos like Sebelius and the IRS to propose and administer Obamacare and other lunatic government programs (government “problems” would be more apt.)–all over-funded, job-killing and cancerous.
.Left wing indoctrinated college freaks not only can’t afford Obamacare but they can’t get any jobs because of it.
.In a no-job market the only openings available for poorly trained, unqualified left wing indoctrinated college freaks is to become left wing professorial nuts themselves. Problem is-only one opening per 75,000 applicants.
MaiDee on May 22, 2013 at 10:55 PM
This. Only recently has it even been physically possible for me to go apartment shopping. And the state of the job market basically robs you of all career choice.
Seriously, you wanna be depressed to the core of your being? Try writing out a budget and realizing 9 hour shifts of putting up with flappy-mouthed rudesters for co’work’ers and being abused by dumb angry proles who want everything for free will BARELY provide enough money to exist on.
Would be a lot more money for me if it wasn’t being taken to feed the Democrat ‘minority’ voting blocs…
MelonCollie on May 22, 2013 at 10:55 PM
Exactly. Even with all manner of Federal subsidies, there are only so many ‘jobs’ for overpaid wind-up puppets. The rest of us actually have to find real employment, which is currently about like panning for gold at your local public pool.
MelonCollie on May 22, 2013 at 10:58 PM
Nah, there are plenty of jobs for them. Obama wants his domestic national police force, equipped as well as the military. 3 hots and a cot along with all the “personal defense weapons” and “weapons of war” you can want with that new authoritah.
oryguncon on May 22, 2013 at 11:24 PM
Well, except for that really, really high insurance premium – you know, that one that you’re required to purchase. Oh sure, you probably wouldn’t have purchased insurance at such a young age – but if we’re going to offset the costs associated with insuring people with preexisting conditions – we need to you to pay your fair share. See? Doesn’t that feel good?
Sure hope you find a good-paying job… you’re going to need it!
Hill60 on May 23, 2013 at 12:04 AM
I still think that in this picture she looks like Dana Carvey as The Church Lady.
bugsy on May 23, 2013 at 5:42 AM
I don’t understand why there is never any pushback from the GOP or commentators on the stupid claim that insurance companies discriminate with higher premiums based on being a woman. What they are referring to is that insurance is typically higher for a woman of child bearing age than a similarly aged man. Well, duh that’s because women can get pregnant and men can’t and so they are at a higher risk of causing higher payouts. I know my six pregnancies cost our insurance company a lot more money than my husband did at the same age. To force a single male to pay the same rates as a single female during childbearing years is redistribution for the sake of politics/feminist agenda pure and simple.
txmomof6 on May 23, 2013 at 5:52 AM
I despise this Sebelius woman.
locomotivebreath1901 on May 23, 2013 at 6:12 AM
to the class of 2013:
good luck finding a job; and don’t forget to pay your obamacare ‘taxes’ or the IRS will be coming for you.
you voted for these socialists; welcome to the real world chumps!
burserker on May 23, 2013 at 10:10 AM
In charge of your medical records.
Schadenfreude on May 23, 2013 at 3:16 PM