The Hypocrisy of Obama Choosing Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary

Obama’s current Chief of Staff, Jack Lew, is reportedly going to be Obama’s choice to replace Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Many people don’t know who Jack Lew is, but I’m going to tell you. When I do, you’ll see just how much of a fraud Obama’s campaign messaging against Mitt Romney was during the campaign.

First, let’s look back at the messaging. According to the Obama Cult, Mitt Romney was bad for the country because he used to run a private equity firm and, in their view, made millions by buying up companies and closing them up, and sometimes shipping jobs to China. As we know, Bain Capital actually tried to keep the vast majority of the companies they bought afloat and in the US. But that’s not how the Obama Cult portrayed it, and with the help of the media, private equity firms became a bad thing. Let’s ignore that a lot of the “shipping jobs overseas” stuff happened long after Romney left the company and those decisions were made by current Bain executives who also happen to be Democrats and Obama supporters. That stuff wasn’t widely reported. The media had a job to do and they did it well.

The fraudulent claim, in a nutshell, was that Romney had bet against America. That message stuck, even though it was patently false. Any objective analysis of Romney’s time in the private sector would show that he helped companies grow and create American jobs more often than not.

Now let’s look at Jack Lew.

He spent most of his career either working for Democrats in various capacities or in academia. For a year or so, though, he was the Chief Operating Officer for CitiGroup’s “Alternative Investments” business unit. This unit invested heavily in a hedge fund that literally bet against America, unlike Mitt Romney.

Though Lew is a longtime public servant who’s spent nearly 30 years in various positions throughout government, it is his few years at Citi — in particular the one year he spent at its then-$54 billion proprietary trading, hedge fund and private equity unit — that’s likely to raise the most eyebrows in the coming weeks as Lew faces a Senate confirmation hearing.

Especially his unit’s investments in a hedge fund that bet on the housing market to collapse — a reality suffered by millions of American homeowners.

This is from the Huffington Post. Read the whole thing. Lew’s investments in funds like the one above got him some nice bonus checks. CitiGroup also needed to be bailed out when all hell broke loose in 2008-09.

So after four years of hating on Wall Street to gin up votes, Obama is still putting the very same Wall Street “fat cats” in cabinet positions. First Geithner, now Lew. I wonder if the Occupy Wall Street folks will feel as if they’ve been hippie-punched again.

I’d like to also note something the HuffPo author wrote that will be interesting to watch now that Obama has chosen Lew:

Citigroup, the nation’s third-largest bank, received $45 billion in TARP bailout funds that year. The firm also has issued $64.6 billion in taxpayer-backed debt through a crisis-era Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation program, according to its latest quarterly filing with the SEC. And it stands to gain a few billion dollars more by modifying home mortgages under the administration’s foreclosure-prevention plan, Treasury Department figures show.

Lew’s role at the fund is raising some eyebrows among good government groups.

“That sounds pretty nasty, doesn’t it?” said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a group that monitors the budget office. “Any activity and any player that contributed to the economic calamity needs to be looked at.

“We already got enough players in this administration that certainly were key players in the economic malaise that we currently have,” Bass continued. “Why shouldn’t we have another one?” he said with a slight chuckle.

But Bass added that he thought Lew was an otherwise excellent choice for the position, noting that as budget director Lew has a proven track record (he held the position during part of the Clinton administration).

This is when he was being appointed Obama’s Chief of Staff. But Treasury Secretary?

While putting him atop Treasury may have been a risky move considering his background, Bass said OMB would be a good fit — particularly if he calls for more stimulus spending to combat the softening economy as opposed to insisting on deficit reduction.

A “risky move” to put Lew “atop Treasury.”

That’s what Obama is doing. Will the lefty media bring this up now? Will they make a stink? Or will they just play along with whatever narrative Obama wants?

We shall see. But the fact is that Obama’s entire campaign against the “1%” was a load of bull. The hypocrisy is staggering.