Thursday, April 26, 2018

No. 321: All Hands In The Till Until (the outing of Otting)

REUTERS

Exclusive: Trump's bank watchdog bought financial stocks up until taking office

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee [Joseph Otting] for Wall Street regulator Comptroller of the Currency bought financial stocks until he took office in November. . .

“Nominees are supposed to shed investments before they take office, not gamble on stocks until the last moment,” said Richard Painter, who served as ethics adviser to President George W. Bush. “If I were handling this, I would have pulled the nomination.”

A former career banker and close associate of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Otting is one of several Trump appointees whose ties to industries they regulate have raised questions about their ability to be impartial when enforcing rules.
(MORE)

With a fox in charge of our hen house,
we cannot pretend we're surprised
when the fox feasts on our chickens.
What else would we have surmised?