New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin has earned a reputation over the years for being friendly with the Wall Street giants he covers. If you read his bizarre rant against Senator Elizabeth Warren, it’s not hard to see why.
Elizabeth Warren (cc photo: New America Foundation)
Warren, who has spent years loudly criticizing the failure to properly regulate and punish finance industry wrongdoing, wrote a piece for the Huffington Post (11/19/14) to say she disagreed with the White House’s nomination of Antonio Weiss as undersecretary for domestic finance at the Treasury Department.
What’s the problem? Weiss has “spent the last 20 years of his career ” at a giant financial firm Lazard, “most of it advising on international mergers and acquisitions.” To Warren, that makes him the wrong kind of person for the job:
Neither his background nor his professional experience makes him qualified to oversee consumer protection and domestic regulatory functions at the Treasury…. There are a lot of people who have spent their careers focused on these issues, and Weiss isn’t one of them.
She goes on to argue that this is part of the “larger, more general issue of Wall Street executives dominating the Obama administration, as well as the Democratic Party’s, overall economic policymaking apparatus.”
Andrew Ross Sorkin (cc photo: David A. Grogan)
So what’s wrong with the idea that the White House hasn’t been tough enough on Wall Street? Lots, according to Sorkin. Under the headline “Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Misplaced Rage at Obama’s Treasury Nominee” (11/24/14), he uses words like “furious,” “wrath” and “ferocious” to describe her “rage.” And it’s not just that she’s mad—she’s “misinformed.”
What did Warren get wrong, exactly? Sorkin tells readers that Weiss “works at Lazard, not Citigroup.” Yes; no one said otherwise. He adds that Weiss
is hardly the prototypical banker. He is a protégé of the writer and editor George Plimpton and is the publisher of the Paris Review, the literary magazine, giving it financial support it for years to keep it alive.
He’s helped support the Paris Review. Well, this changes everything!
He goes on to point out that Weiss was “a staunch supporter—and campaign donation bundler—for President Obama and is considered relatively progressive, especially by Wall Street standards.” Sorkin even mentions that Weiss “is one of the few people within financial circles who might have been friends with Ms. Warren.”
That Warren is critical of someone she might be friendly with is, if anything, a sign that Warren is taking a principled stance.
The real problem, for Sorkin, is that Warren misunderstands the Tim Hortons/Burger King merger—the “so-called inversion deal on which she bases much of her opposition.”
Antonio Weiss on CNBC
But things aren’t nearly as clear as Sorkin would like them to be. Warren writes that a corporate inversion is a tax avoidance strategy “that allows them to maintain their operations in America but claim foreign citizenship and cut their US taxes even more.” Weiss’s firm worked for Burger King on the deal—and has done similar work on other inversions.
Not so fast, says Sorkin—this is no normal inversion: “While the merger is technically an inversion, it isn’t comparable to so many of the cynically constructed deals that were done this year simply to reduce taxes.”
That’s what Burger King says—though Stephen Shay (Reuters, 9/2/14), an expert on corporate taxation from Harvard Law School, says, “I would be surprised if in five years’ time, their tax rate does not come down reasonably dramatically.”
In any case, Warren used the Burger King merger as a high-profile example of the kind of corporate tax dodging that Weiss’s firm works on routinely. As she put it, Lazard “has helped put together three of the last four major corporate inversions that have been announced in the US.” She also notes that Lazard itself has engaged in the same kind of maneuvering, moving its corporate home address to Bermuda “to take advantage of a particularly slimy tax loophole.”
This is the crux of Sorkin’s argument that Warren “is, to put it politely, mistaken.” She calls this a tax inversion, and it’s not—or actually it is, since it’s “technically an inversion.” Is that clear enough for you?
Near the end of his piece, Sorkin admits that Warren could have had a better argument if she wasn’t so blinded by her rage:
It is true that Mr. Weiss doesn’t have a lot of experience in the regulatory arena, and at least part of the role he is nominated for involves carrying out the remaining parts of the Dodd/Frank overhaul law. It is also true that Mr. Weiss, if confirmed, will be the beneficiary of a policy at Lazard that vests his unvested shares—some $20 million in stock and deferred compensation—by taking a government job. That creates its own conflicts.
Ms. Warren might be more persuasive if she focused on those issues.
Good point: Warren should have focused on his lack of regulatory experience.
Oh wait, she did. Right there in the fourth paragraph:
That raises the first issue. Weiss has spent most of his career working on international transactions—from 2001 to 2009 he lived and worked in Paris—and now he’s being asked to run domestic finance at Treasury. Neither his background nor his professional experience makes him qualified to oversee consumer protection and domestic regulatory functions at the Treasury.
Free tip for Andrew Ross Sorkin: Don’t say someone should have emphasized a point they in fact raised as “the first issue.” It makes it seem like you didn’t read the article you’re critiquing.
Genuine liberals and progressives such as Ms. Warren make neolibs like Sorkin very uncomfortable. Liz is like the little boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes fable, pointing at the naked king. How would you expect an apologist like Sorkin to respond?
Would Sorkin be using words such as rage if Ms. Warren were a Mr.?
I was hoping that FAIR would devote some attention to last week’s Senate Banking Committee hearing, where Warren was one of only five senators to attend, which saw some interesting admissions from New York Fed head William Dudley concerning the Obama administration and the lack of criminal prosecutions for the many illegal actions committed by the major banks in recent years. Given the remarkable lack of coverage of the event (and the obvious apathy of the majority of Congress) this is certainly a story worth giving additional coverage.
Also worth covering (given virtually zero media coverage) was last week’s equally damning Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report which shows these same banks’ manipulation of the commodities markets. In fact, it was precisely this report which was the focus of the hearing on Friday.
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/subcommittee-finds-wall-street-commodities-actions-add-risk-to-economy-businesses-consumers
I remember, after returning from Viet Nam, and shortly after the Kent State massacre, watching Nixon on the tube announcing the invasion of Cambodia. My sole experience of blind rage.
I can only imagine Andrew Ross Sorkin felt something similar when he read Elizabeth Warren’s critique of the Weiss appointment. He’s projecting all of his own feelings onto Warren. Not a highlight for NYT journalism.
You’re right Dipsey O. Doodle, Sorkin wouldn’t talk about rage if Warren weren’t a woman. She showed no signs of rage, only very superior knowledge which seems to have enraged him so much that he couldn’t see to read the many points she noted regarding Mr. Weiss’ poor qualifications for the job. And Peter Hart’s rather glaring omission is the lack of comment on Sorkin’s sexist tactic of trying to discredit Warren by insisting she was overemotional- it was just that time of the month.
Thank you very much, but I’ll stick with Elizabeth Warren.
Even if she does not have everything exactly right, the status-quo is so wrong it must be opposed, and they hide and mislead about everything they do, the reason for it, and the effect it will have … for 40 years now.
That Sorkin really must deal with innuendo and talking around the issue and then claims to know what kind of person Warren should be friendly with is more than a little incoherent.
A minor sidebar to the issue of how Sorkin dealt with her and would it have been different if she’d been male — I found myself wondering when I read the piece, as he continued to refer to her as “Ms. Warren” — would he have called a male Senator Mr. Warren or Sen. Warren?
Lapdog – Look in Dictionary under; find Sorkins Picture. He has no ‘facts’ to deal with, he needs only ‘attack’ and the loyal troops under him will instantly take the fight out and proclaim her to be a “Bad Person”.
Since facts are needed, he won’t need to use any. One wonders if in fact, he has any.
Lets try this: Since facts aren’t needed, he won’t need to use any. One wonders if in fact, he has any.
Sorkin is a twerp.
This is yet another sign that America, as we used to know her, is dead.
We now exist purely to work and pay our masters to rule us as ignorant peasants would. No accountability required for our overlords these days, and anyone who thinks there should be is made to look foolish by the owned media. There will be a special place in Hell for those who sold this country out over the past 40 years. These folks are the traitors, not a truth telling man like Ed Snowden. Disgusting.
You haven’t mentioned that Lizard is one of the owners of the Federal Reserve.
Not being familiar with the background, you miss the big picture
During her campaign against the incumbent, S Brown, Prof Warren was doing ok, but not as well as you might expect in blue MA.
I think this was because she was learning about campaigning in real time, and let me tell you, on TV, that aint pretty
so in the polls she is doing ok, but not great
A real turning point was the second debate, when she said to brown, you have had 3 chances to vote on nominees that affect women , eg SCOTUS, and you failed each time
This really, imo, was the start of her winning the election
Fast Foward to Now first term Sen E Warren
What are some of the first actions she takes ?
She votes to confirm nominees: J Lew SecTreasury, C Hagel SecDef, and J O Brennan DCIA
J Brennan was one of the principlas of the Bush torture policy, and, in fact, early in Obama’s 1st term, he had to withdraw Brennan’s name due to dem opposition
Ms Warren voted to confirm – can you imagine her outrage if a GOPpres had nominated Brennan ?
Not to mention, warren voted to confirm J Lew who seems to represent at least as well as the current guy the 0.01% arrogance
So, the real story is, when Obama was powerfull, Warren knuckled under and voted to confirm odious people; now that Obama is a lameduck, suddenly, Warren has the courage to speak out…
PS: Hagel as SecDOD overseas the health of 1,000s of woman in foward bases, where , say, abortions are darn hard to come by. That Hagel is a strident rightwing anti choice zealot does not give one confidence that he will work for woman, and makes a mockery of where warren started, campaigning for woman
Sorkin calling Senator Warren Ms. Warren is akin to many posters on sites that I browse calling Barack Obama by his middle name. To them it’s proof enough to say that he is a muslim and that makes him a terrorist in their eyes.