Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Timothy Massad
President Obama is about to do it again – appoint one of those revolving door Wall Street lawyers to head a critical top post at one of Wall Street’s key regulators. This time it’s the Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). According to multiple leaks in the business press today, this afternoon the President will nominate Timothy Massad to head the CFTC – a man who spent 27 years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, a core part of Wall Street’s legal muscle.
Massad is not coming directly from Cravath this time around. On June 30, 2011, Massad was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as the Department of Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability.
If confirmed to head the CFTC, Massad will play a critical role in the regulation of derivatives, an area that has received heavy pushback from his former law firms’ clients. The agency is also involved in investigating major Wall Street firms for rigging the Libor interest rate benchmarks and collusion on the pricing of foreign currencies. Investigations of other potential commodity manipulations are also underway.
Is President Barack Obama breaking all the rules typically associated with creating a highly motivated work force within the Federal government by appointing outsiders instead of promoting from within the ranks of the regulatory agencies that oversee Wall Street?
What has happened to meritocracy where the long-tenured career public servant has a chance to one day head the agency. Is President Obama suggesting to the American people that no one from inside the regulatory bodies that oversee and prosecute Wall Street is fit to head them?
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