Clinton to name former financial regulator as CFO: Bloomberg

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton plans to name Gary Gensler, a former financial regulator who pushed for stricter oversight of Wall Street, as the chief financial officer for her presidential campaign, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Clinton blasted executive pay and tax rates for hedge-fund managers this week on the first stop of her campaign rollout in Iowa to highlight her promise to help Americans struggling toward economic recovery. Bloomberg cited in its report an unnamed Democrat familiar with the decision. Gensler, whose five-year term as the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ended in January 2014, came to embody President Barack Obama’s push for Wall Street reforms in the trillion-dollar derivatives market. A one-time Goldman Sachs swaps trader, he transformed the watchdog from a relatively sleepy agriculture-focused regulator to a powerful overseer of Wall Street. He proved a polarizing figure with his aggressive interpretation of swaps reforms after the financial crisis, irritating both Wall Street and international counterparts. "There is something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses or the truckers that I saw on I-80 as I was driving here over the last two days," Clinton said in Monticello, Iowa, on Tuesday. Clinton, considered the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination next year, announced her candidacy last Sunday. Reuters could not immediately reach Gensler for comment. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham and Douwe Miedema; Editing by Peter Cooney)