CNBC's Leisman to Andrea Mitchell: "He [Lew] is not one of the club [of big bankers]."

[Skidmore]

I hadn't really looked into Lew's appointment much yet but it definitely sounds to me like Wall Street/big banking is not liking this appointment to replace Geithner. Mitchell kept asking if Lew had enough chops to broker deals. I'm thinking that anything that makes these people have upset stomachs might be good.

[QC]

1. Citigroup is a pretty big bank. n/t

[amandabeech]

2. Liesman is complete tool

Andrea Mitchell interviewing Steve Liesman clearing is 0.5% interviewing 1%.

Disgusting.

[spanone]

3. k&r...

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. 'Deregulation Did Not Cause the Financial Crisis

Here's a crucial piece of information about Lew: He has said he doesn't believe financial deregulation was a major cause of the financial crisis. In 2010, Lew testified before Congress that the deregulation of Wall Street in the Clinton era—the repeal of Glass-Steagall, say, or the ending of real regulation of complex derivatives—wasn't a critical factor. "The problems in the financial industry preceded deregulation," Lew told members of the Senate budget committee in September 2010. He added that he didn't "personally know the extent to which deregulation drove it, but I don't believe that deregulation was the proximate cause."

Lew knows that period of deregulatory zeal well, having served as President Bill Clinton's director of the Office of Management and Budget from May 1998 to January 2001. Lew has spent much of his career in government, is a savvy negotiator and budget wonk, and is respected by Republicans and Democrats. Republicans, though, have been grumbling about him more recently—after all, in 2011, he outsmarted the congressional GOP in intense budget talks. And liberals have criticized Lew for his post-Clinton work for the mega-bank Citigroup, where he ran a unit that profited off shorting the housing market.

Lew's 2010 claim that deregulation wasn't a major cause of the financial crisis is disputed by many experts as well as the government's own investigatory body, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. In its final report (PDF), the commission stated that "widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision proved devastating to the stability of the nation's financial markets."

Read more:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/01/jack-lew-treasury-secretary-deregulation-financial-crisis