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http://www.npr.org/2013/05/08/181999...-happen-slowly
RIVLIN: So Mr. Gensler was a really interesting guy, and you really - I really got the impression, I spent like a half a day with him, and I really got the impression there was so much more he wanted to say about the frustrations of, you know, what he was up against. But, you know, he's a political appointee; there's only so much he could say. But there's this corridor near his office that's lined with the framed pictures of commissioners, past commissioners.
And we're walking past it, and he suddenly stops, and he goes: You know, I see these people all the time. And I said: What do you mean? And he goes: Well - and he points to the first picture, Michael Dunn, the immediate past chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He's now a lobbyist with Patton Boggs, which might be the leading lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.
Next picture, Walter Lukken, another past chair under the second President Bush. He's now a CEO for one of the main derivatives trade associations. The next picture, George W. Bush's first CFTC commissioner James Newsome. He founded his own lobbying firm. And so on.
And, you know, he counts back, going about a dozen years, and three out of every four people on that wall are in his office regularly, he told me, lobbying to water down Dodd-Frank; put, perhaps, loopholes into it, somehow make it so it's more to the liking of their paying clients.
RIVLIN: So Mr. Gensler was a really interesting guy, and you really - I really got the impression, I spent like a half a day with him, and I really got the impression there was so much more he wanted to say about the frustrations of, you know, what he was up against. But, you know, he's a political appointee; there's only so much he could say. But there's this corridor near his office that's lined with the framed pictures of commissioners, past commissioners.
And we're walking past it, and he suddenly stops, and he goes: You know, I see these people all the time. And I said: What do you mean? And he goes: Well - and he points to the first picture, Michael Dunn, the immediate past chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He's now a lobbyist with Patton Boggs, which might be the leading lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.
Next picture, Walter Lukken, another past chair under the second President Bush. He's now a CEO for one of the main derivatives trade associations. The next picture, George W. Bush's first CFTC commissioner James Newsome. He founded his own lobbying firm. And so on.
And, you know, he counts back, going about a dozen years, and three out of every four people on that wall are in his office regularly, he told me, lobbying to water down Dodd-Frank; put, perhaps, loopholes into it, somehow make it so it's more to the liking of their paying clients.