Saturday, December 15, 2007

Gun law

From the New York Times, a little by-the-way insight into how people with good credentials can get locked out of jobs under George W. Bush --

Then, in the summer of 2006, the White House called. The person the administration had hoped to nominate as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the nation’s primary bank regulator, was suddenly proving unacceptable. (According to the Washington rumor mill, that choice, Diana L. Taylor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s companion and, at the time, New York’s superintendent of banking, was nixed by the National Rifle Association, presumably because of Mayor Bloomberg’s antigun stance.)

So the NRA gets a veto over financial sector jobs. Not exactly what panicked financial markets probably want to hear.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2008: The alternative candidate, Sheila Bair, is doing a pretty good job.

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