Elizabeth Warren wins one

Naked Capitalism - Elizabeth Warren blasted the Administration’s nomination of a Lazard executive and senior mergers & acquisitions banker Antonio Weiss to the number three Treasury post, assistant secretary for domestic finance. Warren’s grounds for objecting to Weiss were straightforward: his experience was no fit for the requirements of his proposed Treasury role. On top of that, he had been involved in and therefore profited from acquisitions called inversions that Treasury opposes because they reduce the taxes paid by the acquirer, which uses the acquired company to move its headquarters to a lower-tax jurisdiction.

Today Weiss withdrew as a candidate for the Treasury position. From Politico:

    Antonio Weiss, the Wall Street banker who President Barack Obama had picked to be the third-ranking official at the Treasury Department, has asked that the president not resend his nomination to the Senate following a major backlash from progressive Democrats who questioned his ties to the financial industry, POLITICO has learned.

    Obama accepted the decision, which Weiss conveyed in a letter to the president over the weekend. But the Lazard banker will still join the administration in the position of counselor to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, which does not require Senate confirmation.

Cynics may say that the Administration has gotten its way by making Weiss a counselor, but it could have done that from the outset. This is the Administration trying to salvage the situation. Even though Weiss will still be able to get Wall Street friendly views into the mix at Treasury, that was already the bias. He will not have execution authority and his reputation has taken a dent, which will discourage other Wall Street cronies from taking nominations for positions senior enough to need Congressional approval.