Salient to Investors:
William D. Cohan writes:
With the expected appointment of Jason Furman as the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Robert Rubin has completed the remarkable feat of placing 5 of his acolytes in key positions of power in the Obama administration. The other four are Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Director of OMB Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Director of the NEC Gene Sperling, and the nominee for US Trade Representative, Michael Froman.
The track record of the Rubin acolytes for real reform on Wall Street is poor. Despite Dodd-Frank, genuine financial reform is moribund. The Volcker Rule is missing in action amid the bureaucracy of the Fed. Transparency in the derivatives markets was dealt a near-fatal blow this month by the CFTC, which caved in to Wall Street and hollowed out a provision requiring multiple bids for a derivatives transaction.
Nobody in Washington or Wall Street thinks allowing Goldman Sachs or JPMorganChase to fail is remotely possible. Rubin et al have been very good at maintaining the status quo on Wall Street for the people who run those firms, as Rubin once did at Goldman Sachs.
Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-30/bob-rubin-s-coup-is-now-complete.html
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