Set a thief to catch a thief?
Maybe that’s the strategy. Daniel Schulman in Mother Jones:
During his first confirmation hearing, Scott O’Malia got off easy. The nominee to the nation’s commodities watchdog agency was never asked about his role, years earlier, as a top lobbyist for a firm accused of Enron-style abuses, including manipulating California’s energy market and contributing to a statewide electricity crisis. That is, the very same type of market misconduct that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is charged with policing, if not preventing.
O’Malia, a Senate staffer who spent nearly a decade working for Mitch McConnell, was originally selected to serve as a CFTC commissioner by George W. Bush. But, after clearing the Senate agriculture committee, his nomination stalled. President Obama recently nominated him again, and O’Malia will soon face another confirmation hearing. This time around, though, he may face some tough questions about his two-year stint as the director of federal legislative affairs for Atlanta-based Mirant. Following a story by Mother Jones on his lobbying past, a spokeswoman for new agriculture committee chair Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) says O’Malia will be questioned about his history working for a company that pushed for deregulation and was the subject of a litany of lawsuits alleging unscrupulous business practices. "The confirmation process exists to fully vet nominees," Katie Laning Niebaum, Lincoln’s communications director, told me. "Chairman Lincoln will address this matter in the hearing and looks forward to complete, transparent answers from Mr. O’Malia and all nominees." (The hearing, which will include testimony from two other CFTC nominees, has yet to be scheduled.)
O’Malia’s nomination comes as the Obama administration is laying out a sweeping financial reform agenda—or, as the president himself put it last week, "the most ambitious overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression." In the past, the CFTC has often been seen as a feckless regulator, and strengthening its oversight of the futures and derivatives markets features prominently in the Obama administration’s agenda. That’s why some consumer advocates question why an ex-lobbyist for a company that gamed energy markets—Mirant eventually settled a spate of California lawsuits to the tune of a half billion dollars—has been chosen to fill this important seat. "This does not send a signal that wrongdoers are going to be held accountable," say Tyson Slocum, the director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program and a member of the CFTC’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee.
A White House official explained …
