Robert Reich on the Jack Lew nomination

[Klukie]

I worked with Jack Lew, Obama's pick for Treasury Secretary, during the Clinton administration, and recall him as a talented, self-effacing technocrat who knows the federal budget inside out -- a skilled wonk without his own agenda who'll serve the President well as the administration faces the next showdowns over the debt ceiling, sequestration, and money to keep the government going. Jack also knows politics, and can navigate the undercurrents of Capitol Hill. And apart from a short stint at Citibank in 2008 (another of Bob Rubin's boys), he's not tainted by Wall Street's myopic worldview. In other words, a solid and safe pick, which is just what Obama needs.

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich


Check out the comments for the debate.

[sadbear]

1. I trust Robert Reich.

If he's cool with it, so am I.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

6. Thanks sadbear, but I find the comments more helpful than Reich's paragraph...

For instance...

Is Obama's Treasury Nominee A Big Bank Crony? TYT
1. Busted NYU union
2. Took a $900,000 bonus at CitiGroup after the bank got bailed out. We called them douchebags when they weren't Obama appointees.
3. Post-CitiGroup he becomes an advocate for the banks
4. Doesn't think deregulation was the cause of the financial collapse (Rubinite to the core) This guy is dangerous!

And Chris Hayes just throws Lew on the merry-go-round of banker douchbaggery at the Treasury.

3 segments, 2 30-second commercial breaks. MUST SEE for all who don't choose to stick their head in the sand and those who do.

@ 8:45 of segment 3 discusses the 2 TARP votes. That, and Obama's decision to bring in Clinton's financial advisers (the Rubinites), mark the moment Obama jumped the shark IMO. Yep, before he was even inaugurated.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/ns/msnbc-up_with_chris_hayes/#50441104



Totally aside and completely unrelated...
As much as I like Reich and much of his commentary today, I don't give him a free pass due to his support for NAFTA.

Q: When you were the labor secretary to the first term of the Clinton administration, they pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement. You were part of that administration. Was that a mistake?

Reich: I don’t think it was a mistake, but it wasn’t really a tremendous help. If you put labor and environmental standards into our trade agreements, it’s not a race to the bottom. If you have an environmental standard and a labor standard that, for example, bars all slave labor, guarantees the right to organize, maintains kind of minimum labor standards throughout the world, you are setting a floor for all nations. It’s not protectionism. This is a way of actually getting everybody up rather than having the bar continue to trend downward. We tried to do this in NAFTA, and, unfortunately, we couldn’t get the Mexican government support. We tried to have a labor and environmental side agreement. I think it would have been a much better agreement had we had that.

We were sold "free trade" garbage by the Clinton admin/Rubinites, and Lew is a Rubinite. Even Reich says so (but he's a good Rubinite).

[1-Old-Man]

2. Here is an opninion I will respect, if Reich endorses him so do I

[WilliamPitt]

3. ...Reich under the bus in 3...2...1...

[think]

4. K&R Thanks for posting.

That's an endorsement I really respect.

[pansypoo53219]

5. #1 for me. HE IS NOT FROM GOLDMAN SUX.