Yesterday Obama named Shaun Donovan, New York’s Housing commissioner who also worked in HUD during the Clinton administration, as his nominee for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. I don’t know much about him other than what I read in this profile in the New York Times in which there is a quote that turns my stomach a little due to my admittedly slightly hypocritical for an FHA specialist belief that government regulation and meddling is never a good solution:

I would never believe that the private sector, left to its own devices, is the best possible solution. I’m in government because of the role of government in setting rules and working in partnership with the private sector. On the other hand, there’s no way you could ever get to a scale that can really affect the housing problems in this country without working with the market. - Shaun Donovan from a 2006 New York Times profile.

But I’m always willing to wait and see what happens, even though 80% of the reason he is the nominee is probably because he took a leave of absense from his previous job to work on Obama’s campaign. According to Politico, Donovan “was one of the earliest public officials to foresee the magnitude and destructive capacity of the subprime crisis.” and “…unlike many Clinton-era housing officials, the 42-year-old financing expert never subscribed to the prevailing (and deeply misguided) belief that low-income homeownership was the panacea for all the nation’s housing ills.” So at least he may not be as short sighted and driven by untoward influences as some of his predecessors have been.

Here’s a link to Obama’s address in which he announces the nomination and gives his reasons: Obama Makes HUD Pick

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