“Antonio Weiss is a highly qualified nominee and we look forward to the Senate’s consideration of his nomination and swift confirmation,” White House spokesperson Jennifer Friedman said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

Treasury officials and other Weiss supporters note the Lazard banker’s long background supporting progressive tax policy, including co-authorship of a Center for American Progress report on the topic. They also note that he is publisher of the literary journal Paris Review and was a prodigious fundraiser for both of Obama’s presidential campaigns.

Around Wall Street, Weiss is considered a left-leaning Democrat who would line up pretty closely with most of Sen. Warren’s views on tax and regulatory policy.

“He has truly progressive values and completely supports the financial reform agenda of the president,” said Gene Sperling, a former top Obama economic adviser who has often served as a bridge between progressive and centrist Democrats. “And his background and knowledge will be helpful in ensuring that reforms designed to help small businesses and families are not subverted or circumvented by Wall Street manipulation that generalist policymakers might not see coming.”

onecaliberal

(32,777 posts)

6. Weiss is the person who came up with

Reply to PoliticAverse (Reply #3)

Sun Dec 21, 2014, 04:31 PM

Dec 2014

The idea of putting an office overseas then calling yourself an international company to get away with paying little to NO tax in the US. That is NOT progressive tax policy. It is another case of the fox guarding the hen house. It's absurd. Lazard is paying him 16 million as he leaves.
These are the exact people we do not need.

RiverLover

(7,830 posts)

4. Or, what’s good for the people who run big banks is good for the country. That's rich, isn't it?

Reply to onecaliberal (Original post)

Sun Dec 21, 2014, 02:45 PM

Dec 2014

...“Mr. Weiss has spent a quarter century operating in financial markets, including more than 20 years at Lazard, the last five of which as Global Head of Investment Banking. He has specific expertise advising companies how to grow, and how to finance that growth. Lazard is not a money center or lending bank and does not engage in sales and trading. Mr. Weiss has been deeply involved on behalf of large and small client companies in negotiating every type of financing, from debt and equity through more complex structures.”

All this says is: he worked on Wall Street, knows about corporate finance, and did not directly get bailed out in 2008-09. But there is no definite or specific information here that helps us understand or verify whether Mr. Weiss at all shares, or even deeply believes in, the Wall Street view – an important part of which now is “bailouts are fine” and “the government made money”; completely ignoring the costs of the financial crisis to the broader economy and to ordinary Americans.

The fact that Mr. Weiss’s strong supporters would send a letter devoid of relevant information on this point should itself be interpreted as a signal. If Mr. Weiss were at all skeptical of megabanks, now would be a good time to communicate that point – and we see nothing of the kind....

http://baselinescenario.com/2014/12/17/elizabeth-warren-and-the-independent-community-bankers-of-america-are-right-antonio-weiss-should-not-become-undersecretary-for-domestic-finance/

Reply to this discussion