How Much of a Revolving Door Crony is the New Obama Appointee for Head of the SEC?

I outlined my argument against her here, including her whitewash of payoffs made to get Marc Rich his pardon. But Matt Taibbi even gets her protection of crony elititsts. He writes in Rolling Stone:

Choice of Mary Jo White to Head SEC Puts Fox In Charge of Hen House

I was shocked when I heard that Mary Jo White, a former U.S. Attorney and a partner for the white-shoe Wall Street defense firm Debevoise and Plimpton, had been named the new head of the SEC.

Mary Jo White

I thought to myself: Couldn’t they have found someone who wasn’t a key figure in one of the most notorious scandals to hit the SEC in the past two decades? And couldn’t they have found someone who isn’t a perfect symbol of the revolving-door culture under which regulators go soft on suspected Wall Street criminals, knowing they have million-dollar jobs waiting for them at hotshot defense firms as long as they play nice with the banks while still in office?

I’ll leave it to others to chronicle the other highlights and lowlights of Mary Jo White’s career, and focus only on the one incident I know very well: her role in the squelching of then-SEC investigator Gary Aguirre’s investigation into an insider trading incident involving future Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack. While representing Morgan Stanley at Debevoise and Plimpton, White played a key role in this inexcusable episode.

Taibbi is in favor of insider trading prosecutions, I am not, The point I am pulling from Taibbi's report is that White protects the crony elitists. The fact that she is known as a "tough prosecutor" means nothing other than that she will go after those not part of the inner elite. She is the worst type of government official, going after those unprotected by the establishment and using every vicious tool at her command to do it.

It's the type of official that the crony-left loves to see in power. White is unprincipled and willing to crush free spirits. Indeed, the crony left is so much in favor of White, Tabbibi was forced to add an addendum to his report to emphasize how evil White really is:

Some people I trust have written in to complain that the Mack incident doesn't encompass White's whole career, and that the mere fact that Obama chose an ex-prosecutor with a record of high-level convictions is a good sign. That may be, and the choice of White may very well represent a departure from the last four years. But White's more recent record -- dating back quite a few years now -- has been as a lawyer earning a huge paycheck representing big banks.

Earlier today, I was talking to a former hedge fund manager, a guy who’s been around on Wall Street but is out of the game now. His point about White is simple and it makes a lot of sense. She may very well at one time have been a tough prosecutor. But she dropped out and made the move a lot of regulators make – leaving government to make bucketloads of money working for the people she used to police. “That move, being a tough prosecutor, then going to work defending scumbags, you can only make that move once,” was his point. “You can’t go back again, you know what I mean?”

Think about it: how do you go back and sit in S.E.C.’s top spot after all of those years earning millions as a partner for a firm that represented Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Goldman, Sachs, Deutsche, Chase, and AIG, among others? Think that fact that his firm has retained her firm has anything to do with Jamie Dimon coming out and saying that White is the "perfect choice" to run the S.E.C.? Think of all the things she knows but can’t act upon. Could she really turn around and target Morgan Stanley after being their lawyer for all those years?

Irrespective of the Mack incident, which incidentally really was about as bad as it gets in terms of "regulatory capture," America’s top financial cop should be someone who doesn’t owe his or her nest egg to the world’s biggest banks.

A few points on Taibbi's addendum. Taibbi doesn't seem to be aware that White's current spin through the revolving door is not her first. As I reported, White has, 3 separate times, worked at the high-powered law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton. She split those gigs up with revolving door government jobs. Translation: Total establishment revolving door operative. The unprincipled crony left doesn't mind because, and this also seems to be lost on Taibbi, with Obama as president the crushing by White, in her new SEC position, will be focused on the non-connected. It won't be the banksters. White targets will be many of others the left will love to go after. Billionaire Obama-hater Sheldon Adelson's legal bills will rise for sure.