Saule Omarova is the key “Uncle Joe” pick for a key member of President Obama’s Dodd-Frank financial law crew that the Trump team has scrambled to attack. Her nomination to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has suddenly crashed.
Omarova says the Trump pick, Rohit Chopra, “cannot be trusted” and is unqualified to do her job, says the White House official.
But Omarova: “Rohit Chopra is both qualified and a strong advocate for consumers. I am deeply concerned that Chairman [Richard] Cordray has made a decision to nominate him to the CFPB despite Chopra’s unresolved conflict of interest in an email correspondence with Dennis Kelleher, the head of Better Markets.”
Kelleher is better known as the CEO of Better Markets. She is also one of Joe Biden’s former staffers, and he appointed her to the Board of Transparent Illinois in 2012.
In other regulatory news:
Check out the “Toxic Loans” series on banking regulators’ toxic investments in the stock market. This paper comes on the heels of a fine $50 million from the Treasury for a failure to segregate toxic assets from real estate. Disclosure documents reveal that the NY Fed offered to put $5 million into the financial rescue fund for Chrysler, then operated by Fiat, but Treasury backed out at the last minute, saying it didn’t trust the carmaker.
Another strange Treasury story, the administration pays a group of ex-campaign staffers, some formerly unpaid, to provide policy advice. Almost 200 of them, for 17 months, for $4.3 million, a $600,000 premium, a $150,000 “fees for services,” and $55,000 for travel. Note that the group is all male and Christian.
Chris Inglis, an Obama ally, is definitely staying on as SEC commissioner, despite being an outspoken critic of Wall Street after the 2008 crash. Trump was reportedly considering naming him as Treasury secretary.
Get those first-class flights to a Trump ambassadorship or Cabinet post after all! Ex-Florida Congressman Connie Mack has been accepted as US ambassador to Australia. More than 10,000 people applied for the job. Unusually strong opposition from fellow Republican Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who wanted another potential GOP candidate to get the nod. Kellyanne Conway is OK, and usually endorsed Mack for Senate.