Jack Lew, the man President Obama has chosen to help oversee the country's biggest banks, has said it plainly — he's no expert on banking. Lew said as much when the Senate was vetting him to head the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2010.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked Lew if he thought deregulation of Wall Street caused the financial crisis. Lew said he didn't consider himself the best person to answer that question.
"I don't consider myself an expert in some of these aspects of the financial industry," Lew said. "My experience in the financial industry has been as a manager, not as an investment adviser."
On Wednesday, Lew will again face a confirmation hearing, this time to be Treasury secretary. Members of the Senate Finance Committee are expected to question him about his knowledge of financial markets and his brief stint at Citigroup between the Clinton and Obama administrations.
Just A Manager
Insisting he was just a manager may be the way Lew will wash his hands of a messy time at Citigroup, when he was chief operating officer for one of the bank's riskiest investment units. By calling himself a "manager" at Citigroup, he can suggest he wasn't the one who made some of the financially disastrous decisions there.
And actually, for Lew's defenders now, "manager" already seems to be the go-to word. Robert Rubin, a former Treasury secretary and ex-Citigroup chairman, seized on the term during a recent phone interview. He's the one who helped Lew get a job at Citi.
"That was a job that required somebody who had managerial effectiveness, and Jack had been a very effective manager of the government and a very effective manager at NYU, and that's what they were looking for — manager," Rubin said.
To some people, the word "manager" suggests you're one of the people in charge, and they can't help but notice that Lew was at the helm of a company that suffered such massive losses — Citigroup got the biggest federal government bailout of any bank.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said he wants to know exactly what role Lew played in those losses.
"Did he contribute to the conditions at Citi that led to the bailout?" Grassley asked.
He also pointed out that Lew received a $940,000 bonus from Citigroup shortly before the bank got bailed out.
"I think we ought to know whether or not he gave Wall Street any favors, because he has to be independent from special interest and put the taxpayers first in this new role that he's playing," Grassley said.
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