President Barack Obama gave New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman a plumb assignment: wrangling in the nation’s maligned mortgage industry.
In Tuesday night’s State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama announced the creation of a new Financial Crimes Unit to be headed by Schneiderman.
“This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans,” Obama said. “I will not go back to the days when Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules”
Schneiderman will head the nation’s other Attorney Generals in a countrywide hunt to bring those accountable for the mortgage crisis to justice.
“The American people deserve a robust and comprehensive investigation into the global financial meltdown to ensure nothing like it ever happens again,” Schneiderman said.
David Birdsell, Dean of Baruch College School of Public Affairs and political science expert, says that Schneiderman’s got his work cut out for him.
“It’s hard to have a higher profile assignment,” Birdsell said. “It’s an enormous feather in the Attorney General’s cap; it really cements his position as one of the nations most prominent attorney generals over all.”
Birdsell described Schneiderman as “the sheriff of the mortgage industry” tasked with “making sure we catch the bad guys.”
But as important as the new appointment is to Schneiderman career, Birdsell said that the Attorney General’s successes will reflect on Obama, who still has to assure the nation that he’s got his eye on Wall Street.
