Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary is a guy who took a huge payout from Citigroup as it was receiving a taxpayer bailout then socked the money away in the Cayman Islands. That sentence should be all I need to say but the world seems upside down these days. Will Obama and his followers demonstrate intellectual consistency and oppose Jack Lew for SECTRES, perhaps even calling for an investigation of his time at Citigroup? Obviously not, even though intellectual consistency would require that they do so.
Jack Lew, President Obama’s current Chief of Staff and nominee for Treasury Secretary spent a short stint as head of Citigroup. During his tenure Citi took a taxpayer funded bailout to avoid a potential bankruptcy. Lew himself got a sweet golden parachute to leave Citigroup. The money, along with other monies he earned while at Citi, was invested in high earning investment accounts based in the Cayman Islands.
I have no problem with investing one’s money offshore; it’s your money you can do what you want with it. According to President Obama however, such investment amounts to high treason. I similarly have no problem with an outgoing CEO receiving a generous package, since that is between the board and the CEO. I do have a serious problem with the outgoing CEO of a failing bank getting a payoff to leave while the bank takes taxpayer money to stay in business.
Using the definitions propagated by Obama and his followers, Lew is a bankster, a potential criminal banker who ran his company into the ground, helped cause the financial crises and left the taxpayer to clean up the mess. I agree with that sentiment in general, but I did not just run for president railing against those people and then make one my chief of staff before nominating him to run the Treasury. Taking him at his word Obama should be asking the Justice Department to look into a potential criminal prosecution against Lew; not be placing him in charge of the nation’s finances.
Also – Didn’t Obama say that Mitt Romney investing his money in the Caymans was a national betrayal? Just curious?
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