WASHINGTON—A person who a decade ago sought to rein in the country’s biggest banks will now be playing a role in selecting those who will be supervising them.
Ted Kaufman has been selected to lead President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, giving him a voice in choosing appointees to fill positions across the government. In 2010, during a brief stint in the Senate, the Wall Street Journal noted Kaufman led a push to limit the size of U.S. lenders—a move that would have led to the breakup of the biggest banks had it been successful.
Kaufman has been a critic of the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington as well as high frequency trading, which he said contributed to the May 2010 stock-market “flash crash.” With Republicans likely to maintain control of the Senate, banking-industry officials are hopeful Kaufman will refrain from recommending progressive nominees for roles that require Senate approval, the Journal added.
“There’s no mandate for either party, and he needs to build an administration that is reflective as such,” Richard Hunt, president and chief executive of the Consumer Bankers Association, told the Journal.
Served in Senate
Kaufman, 81, worked as an engineer and in marketing at Dupont before taking a leave of absence in 1972 to volunteer for Biden’s Senate campaign and decided to stay on as an aide and later chief of staff, a job he held for about 20 years. When Mr. Biden became vice president, Kaufman was appointed to fill his seat representing Delaware in 2009 and 2010.
At that time, Democrats were crafting the Dodd-Frank Act to tighten regulation of banks after the global financial crisis and Kaufman sponsored an amendment to prohibit any bank from holding more than 10% of the country’s deposits, the Journal reported. “Had it passed, the amendment would have forced the biggest firms to break up,” the report added.
“We saw this issue come up when it became clear after the financial crisis banks got enormous help and workers didn’t,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who co-sponsored the amendment, said. “That’s what I like about Ted—he cares about the dignity of work and making our economy just.”
In an email to the Journal, Kaufman declined to discuss Biden’s likely approach to Wall Street except to say that the transition would “use what he says as our guide to what a Biden administration will do.”