Obama likes to surround himself with failures. Geithner set the pattern. He was supposed to be the principal regulator of most of the largest U.S. bank holding companies. He was an abject failure. Lew has gone from failure to failure. He was one of the architects of both of the Clinton administration's disastrous statutory deregulatory actions that helped produce the epidemic of accounting control fraud that drove the Great Recession. Emanuel and Daley were failures as directors of Fannie and Freddie. Obama has put failed anti-regulators in positions where they can best undermine the reregulatory effort that is essential to reduce the risk and harm of future crises.