Chris Dodd’s Newfound Concern about Management Experience

Federal bureaucracies which, according to the confirmation hearing questions he asked of prospective directors, Chris Dodd believes require no management experience to run:

  • Securities and Exchange Commission
  • Housing and Urban Development
  • Federal Housing Administration
  • Export-Import Bank
  • National Credit Union Administration
  • Federal Reserve
  • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
  • Office of Thrift Supervision (which oversaw AIG and GE, among other TBTF “entities”)
  • Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Federal bureaucracy which, according to his recent interviews, Chris Dodd believes can only be led by someone who has what he judges to be adequate management experience:

  • Consumer Finance Protection Board

Call me crazy, but I don’t think Chris Dodd’s newfound concern about management experience stems from either the recognition that his past confirmation negligence led to failures at (in particular) SEC and OTS or his genuine concern that the CFPB wouldn’t effectively protect consumers’ interests if it were led by Elizabeth Warren.

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    • PJEvans says:

      Yeah, if he’d gone for more and better management skills on all those other agencies, the CFPB manager might not need so much experience. (But it still would need more than than Dodd has.)

  1. joejoejoe says:

    It’s nice that the prospect of Senate retirement has freed up Chris Dodd…to float his resume as a lobbyist whore of the banking industry. Well played sir. Well played. Chris Dodd, lifelong drinking buddy of liberal lion Ted Kennedy and partner in…well that’s about it. I’m not sure when Dodd has ever been the deciding force on any issue and his legacy is not any better than your average liberal Rhode Island Republican.

  2. jerryy says:

    Maybe the good Senator had some time on his hands and decided to read his buddy Mr. L. Summer’s views on women in high powered jobs.

  3. Rayne says:

    What makes Dodd qualifed to make this assessment? The man is a lawyer by education, has been a representative or senator for 36 years — what in that experience qualifies him to know jack about managerial skills?

  4. bobschacht says:

    EW,
    Thanks for going to all the work to enumerate the agencies for which their directors need no management experience. It sure highlights Dodd’s hypocrisy. Sad to see this; I was a supporter of his during the early part of his presidential campaign.

    Bob in AZ

  5. manys says:

    Hmm, so is this to say that the CFPB is the first agency for which he has asked about management experience? Regardless, I’m sure we can expect “management experience” to be used to find ex-underlings who will complain publicly.

  6. Stephen says:

    This man should only be viewed as a saboteur and a traitor. His personal wealth will begin to skyrocket the second he retires.

  7. alinaustex says:

    Didn’t Dodd get some sweetheart deal from Countrywide on his mortgages .?
    Professor Warren ought to already be in that position,protecting We Consumers,
    Memo to Rahm -‘ what are you guys fooking re–tarded “- all this does is just give Us All one more reason to sit out the midterms !
    Further note to Rahm your fooking buddies over at the hedge funds will not keep us from Primarying President Obama 2012. Don’t believe that fine -don’t confirm Warren and alot of your GOTV will be loooking for a candidate who does represent us . And tell Gibbs this is the base saying this not the professional left (whoever that is ) – WE THE PEOPLE are saying keep this crap up and we will be channeling Inspector Callahan ” Go ahead and make our day ” come the next presidential cycle…
    Paging Senator Feingold …

    • xargaw says:

      Rahm and Gibbs will be long gone before 2012. They will have left the WH for some big bucks cushy job. That is what being a staffer in the WH is all about.

  8. MadDog says:

    OT – Scott Horton linked to a good read from Ahmed Rashid on the real state of Pakistan:

    The Anarchic Republic of Pakistan

    THERE IS perhaps no other political-military elite in the world whose aspirations for great-power regional status, whose desire to overextend and outmatch itself with meager resources, so outstrips reality as that of Pakistan. If it did not have such dire consequences for 170 million Pakistanis and nearly 2 billion people living in South Asia, this magical thinking would be amusing.

    This is a country that sadly appears on every failing-state list and still wants to increase its arsenal from around 60 atomic weapons to well over 100 by buying two new nuclear reactors from China. This is a country isolated and friendless in its own region, facing unprecedented homegrown terrorism from extremists its army once trained, yet it pursues a “forward policy” in Afghanistan to ensure a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul as soon as the Americans leave…

  9. thatvisionthing says:

    That thing Elizabeth Warren said at Netroots Nation about a sponsorless amendment in the 2005 Bankruptcy act making Lehman not a bankruptcy but a run on the bank — would Dodd know anything about that? It sounds to me like TARP was a fraud set up at least as early as 2005.

    And how the 2005 act and the HAMP program are “extend and pretend” setups — string out processes and string along consumers, thus delaying actions (bankruptcies, loan modifications) so that banks can lard on more fees and foreclose in the “rocket docket.”

    NPR had an interview a couple of days ago:

    SIEGEL: So you’ve had foreclosures of people who, as far as they knew, were negotiating their way to keep themselves in the house.

    Mr. KRAMER: I’ve had people foreclosed on who had finished negotiating and had signed all the paperwork and were foreclosed three months later, even though they made all their payments.

    Has Dodd been asked about those things? Who managed that?

  10. stevo67 says:

    Dodd is nothing more than a prostitute, his johns are all the banks on Wall Street.

    Actually, I’m not being fair to prostitutes…

  11. Teddy Partridge says:

    This is the man whose acute managerial skills and political acumen yielded less than one percentage point in the Iowa caucuses, prompting him to drop out of the presidential campaign the very next day, having uprooted his very young family from Connecticut and relocated them to Iowa more than a year prior.

    He’s got nuthin’

  12. Twain says:

    What would Dodd know about management skills – he’s been feeding out of public trough for about the last 40 years and has managed nothing.

  13. sadlyyes says:

    It’s interesting to note that Chris Dodd’s father was a Senator from Connecticut. Why is this important? He was censured by the Senate for using campaign funds for personal purposes. He is lucky enough to be one of only 2 Senators ever censured (the other being Joseph McCarthy).

  14. eCAHNomics says:

    Ahem, near as anyone can tell, the ONLY item on Dodd’s agenda is getting a post-senate sinecure with a classy lobbying org for insurance corps. Guessing his senate retirement program, far more generous than ss, is simply not enough for his exalted opinion of himself. So any gnat, like Warren, who threatens him, must be crushed by a firm thumb.

  15. sadlyyes says:

    Source: Alternet

    Treasury Makes Shocking Admission: Program for Struggling Homeowners Just a Ploy to Enrich Big Banks

    The Treasury Dept.’s mortgage relief program isn’t just failing, it’s actively funneling money from homeowners to bankers, and Treasury likes it that way.

    August 25, 2010 |

    The Treasury Department’s plan to help struggling homeowners has been failing miserably for months. The program is poorly designed, has been poorly implemented and only a tiny percentage of borrowers eligible for help have actually received any meaningful assistance. The initiative lowers monthly payments for borrowers, but fails to reduce their overall debt burden, often increasing that burden, funneling money to banks that borrowers could have saved by simply renting a different home. But according to recent startling admissions from top Treasury officials, the mortgage plan was actually not really about helping borrowers at all. Instead, it was simply one element of a broader effort to pump money into big banks and shield them from losses on bad loans. That’s right: Treasury openly admitted that its only serious program purporting to help ordinary citizens was actually a cynical move to help Wall Street megabanks.

    Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has long made it clear his financial repair plan was based on allowing large banks to “earn” their way back to health. By creating conditions where banks could make easy profits, Getithner and top officials at the Federal Reserve hoped to limit the amount of money taxpayers would have to directly inject into the banks.

    • stevo67 says:

      the corruption in our country, at the highest levels of government and business, is just staggering, isn’t it?

        • stevo67 says:

          I’ve been saying for a long time, “the lesser of two evils is still evil”. I may have been wrong. It looks like Obama, Rahm, Summers, Bernanke, and Geithner are actually more evil than I gave them credit for. At least Bushco was honest about their wickedness.

        • sadlyyes says:

          wanted to answer you about fixed medical expense…..we have that

          its called medicare

          my family biz…medical labs…all fixed government prices

          it works!

      • PeasantParty says:

        Yes. Just like Rome. History is not something these people learn anything from. We are living in Back to the Future or Time Warp.

        • Kelly Canfield says:

          Funny thing about Rome. They had bloggers, so to say.

          There’s a classic form or Latin poetry, “Invective” which is actually a 2-liner, versus the 1-liner putdown that’s effective in today’s American English.

          Poets would be hired to write such invective poetry, then, usually, the same patron would hire a sort of “town crier” to shout the invective at the Marketplace, or other large usual gathering place.

          A specific piece I’ve been thinking about lately as it keeps coming up during this Administration is one of Catullus’.

          Nil nimium studio, Caesar, tibi velle placere
          nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo

          I care nothing much, Caesar, to want to please you
          Nor to know whether you are a white or a black man.

          Yes, there’s a bit of racism in Catullus’ point of view; endemic at the time. But my point is what is most striking are the verbs “to please” and “to know.”

          It was the ultimate in “I could just give a shit about you Caesar” which is quite something.

          Thus, in my geekitude, I often find myself reacting to an Administration mouthpiece muttering:

          Nil nimium studio, Caesar…

  16. PeasantParty says:

    Dodd is only afraid that Warren will mess up his train. You know, the one that chugs money his way?

  17. DrDick says:

    There is no mystery here at all. While Dodd is quite progressive on many issues, he is and always has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the financial industry.

  18. skepticdog says:

    I always wonder how anyone can vote for the GOP. Well when both parties are made up of a bunch of lying SOB’s, there’s not much difference.

  19. MadDog says:

    OT – Via the WaPo:

    Administration halts prosecution of alleged USS Cole bomber

    The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing…

    …In a filing this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”

    The statement, tucked into a motion to dismiss a petition by Nashiri’s attorneys, suggests that the prospect of further military trials for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has all but ground to a halt, much as the administration’s plan to try the accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court has stalled…

    • bobschacht says:

      the Justice Department said that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”

      But they’re going to keep him locked up anyway, right?

      Our country has abandoned its values.

      The main problem, apparently, is the “War.” For the last century, civil rights abuses have proliferated during every war. The problem now is that we have graduated from regular old wars to Perpetual War, and hence perpetual suspension of the Constitution. During such periods, Congress appears willing to approve just about anything in the name of national security (the exception, apparently, according to Sara, being the beginning of WWII, when FDR was Prez and the Republicans were in charge of Congress). That’s why to restore civil rights, we have to end the war!

      Bob in AZ

  20. spocko says:

    What I found interesting is that Dodd was complaining about the “campaign” that Warren was running. Like right wingers bitching about George Soros when the are all funded by Koch, I think this is projection.

    There is a campaign against Warren, started by the banks. So on our side I believe a number of people have offered to help Warren. And I’ll bet they aren’t been paid, unlike the people trying to get someone more “business friendly” in the new CFPB.

    I myself was pestering Folks with suggestions on how I might help.
    My idea was to flush out statements of support or non-support not unlike a whip count. I know that the decisions are all being made behind closed doors, but I thought that if I got some on record they would have to confirm or deny later. I’m thinking that there are a bunch of other people who have been trying to do the same, just because Warren is just so damn good.

  21. figaro says:

    Not only does Dodd have his next job lined up, he’s actively working it so he’ll get a big fat signing bonus. I’m sure, with some digging, some enterprising journalist can find out who he’s working for and pull the curtain back on his blocking of Warren. Just find out which corporation has the most to gain from Warren being blocked and I’m sure that is where Dodd goes after he leaves the Senate.

    • fatster says:

      David Dayen over at the “News Desk” has a good article up about this. We’ll have to wait and see.