Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Meets With Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 25, 2013 in China
The Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, has been in office a mere 15 business days and has already logged more foreign travel on the taxpayers’ tab than most executive branch personnel see in a year.
Lew was sworn in on March 20, 2013. Five days later he was sitting in Beijing chatting it up with China’s President Xi Jinping. Yesterday and today, he’s flitting about Europe. His agenda includes meetings in Brussels with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro and European Commission Vice President Olli Rehn, and European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Michel Barnier. Lew was also scheduled to meet in Frankfurt with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.
Today, Lew heads to Berlin to have a conversation with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble. Lew’s meeting in Paris with French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici was abruptly cancelled by Moscovici. The excuse given was a scheduling conflict but it may well be that the French Finance Minister didn’t like the feedback he was hearing from the earlier meetings.
While Lew’s boss, the President of the United States, was preparing to release his budget proposal tomorrow which will cut Social Security benefits for seniors, veterans and the disabled, Lew was shilling for Wall Street across Europe, talking down the imposition of a financial transaction tax.
This past February, 11 European countries, including Germany and France, agreed to the financial transaction tax which is expected to raise $45 billion annually. The tax would be imposed at the rate of 0.01 percent for derivatives and 0.1 percent for stocks and bonds.
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