Wall Street thinks Obama’s likely Treasury Secretary pick doesn’t know jack about the market.
FORTUNE — Jack Lew, the frontrunner to be named Treasury Secretary in Obama’s second term, isn’t Wall Street’s first choice for the key economic post. He’s not even its second.
“I’ve talked to a bunch of investors and it’s seen as a net negative going from [Tim] Geithner to Lew,” says Chris Krueger, senior political analyst at Guggenheim Partners. “Who does Wall Street want? Not Jack Lew.”
Lew, 57, spent three years on Wall Street working at Citigroup (C) as the chief operating officer of its alternative asset investment management unit. One of the funds Lew’s group invested in was run by John Paulson, who at the time was betting heavily against the housing markets and banks. But that’s not the part of Lew’s resume that anyone seems to remember. And it’s certainly not the important part.
That is something that amazed me in 2008 when the stock market crashed. CNBC analysts all year were saying that the banks were fine. They said there was nothing to worry about. Ben Bernanke said there was no housing bubble. And even though everything crashed people still believed in CNBC and believed in Ben Bernanke. There was no outrage. If there was, Obama would have had to remove him from power when he became Presidnet.
But he in fact brought even more Wall Street people that backed the wild policies that helped bring about the crash into his administration. He brought in men like the Timothy Geithner and had brought mainly Wall Street men into his administration.
To name one example, President Obama’s current Chief of Staff is a man name Jack Lew. He was a former hedge fund manager who worked for Citigroup. In 2008 Citigroup paid him over $900,000. Think about that!
The whole political theater of the Presidential campaign was a supposed us versus them battle of the little people versus the rich hedge fund manager Mitt Romney, when Obama himself has Wall Street people running him.
I have never heard the name Jack Lew mentioned on TV even though he is one of the most powerful people in Washington right now.
and, even more convolutely, the back-lash:
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/26/jack-lew-treasury-secretary/