Personnel Is Policy for the Left on Wall Street Reform.
Martin O’Malley pushes Hillary Clinton to redefine the way Washington handles the big banks.
The heart of the former Maryland governor's banking reform is reinstating a modern Glass-Steagall Act – the Great Depression-era law used to separate commercial and investment banking that was repealed in 1999. . .
O'Malley maintained that he would work to "forge a new consensus" on the issue.
But he also moved on to highlight a strategy that could yield more immediate political success: personnel.There are things that we can do that make a huge difference just in terms of the people we appoint," O'Malley said.
As the Democratic presidential candidates wrestle with how to best rein in excesses of Wall Street banking firms and try to prevent another 2008 implosion, there's a growing consensus on the left that who is involved in crafting and enforcing the next administration's financial regulatory reforms matters just as much as the policies being hatched.
"My advice to any Democratic presidential candidate is if you pick for policy positions the people who are part of the permanent Democratic policy establishment and then let them pick the rest, they will run the administration and your role will be that of celebrity spokesman," Miller cautioned.
O'Malley has not floated specific names for the most important posts that oversee the nation's financial health, including treasury secretary, Federal Reserve chair and the Securities & Exchange Commission.
But he has been the most forthcoming of the presidential candidates in describing the type of people he would seek to fill these crucial roles.
He has made a commitment to prevent "the architects of deregulation" from serving in his administration, a back-handed rebuke of President Bill Clinton's administration, which allowed Glass-Steagall to be phased out. He said he would seek out individuals either at the end or beginning of their careers in order to bring in those untainted by the revolving door that exists between regulators and banks. He would also mine talent from state agencies, noting that the brightest people don't always already reside in Washington. And he would move the power to appoint the general counsel of the Federal Reserve from a board of governors to the presidency.
Progressives have hailed O'Malley's approach and have credited him with pushing Hillary Clinton to make more aggressive statements about Wall Street accountability. Clinton has said more Wall Street executives should face criminal charges for their actions and pledged to "appoint and empower regulators who understand that 'too big to fail' is still too big a problem."
But she disappointed many in the progressive community when she indicated last week she would not sign on to a new Glass-Steagall act, as O'Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders have.
"I think this is a much more complicated issue than to just point at any one piece of legislation and say, 'If we just pass that, everything will be fine,'" she told reporters.
Grumbled a progressive activist working on financial reform, "Glass-Steagall did not cause the financial crisis. That's largely true. But that doesn't mean bringing it back won't help. Her comment seems to reflect the all-too-common centrist response."
This is where credibility creeps into the debate and Clinton's motives are suspect.
Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are three of Clinton's four largest contributors since she began running for office, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into her campaign coffers. O'Malley, on the other hand, has received just $62,265 from banks and financial firms for his presidential run, according to a U.S. News review of his second-quarter Federal Election Commission report.
Furthermore, progressives are watching closely if the men who they see as central to deregulation – former Clinton Treasury Secretaries Larry Summers and Bob Rubin as well as chief of staff Erskine Bowles – are being courted by Clinton or her emissaries.
"She has a somewhat spotty track record on these issues," Miller tells U.S. News. "She needs to show that she's serious. I would like to see more specificity still. I think just saying we need to implement Dodd-Frank is not enough."
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/run-2016/2015/07/27/personnel-is-policy-for-the-left-on-wall-street-reform
