hypocritexposer
Well-known member
"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street."
* Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser, was paid $5.2 million for his part-time work for a massive hedge fund in 2008 alone. He also took in more than $2.7 million in fees for speaking engagements at such places as Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs -- including one visit alone that netted him $135,000 from Goldman Sachs.
* Michael Froman is deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, and a hugely influential White House player with key roles in both the National Security Council and National Economic Council. He made more than $7.4 million at Citigroup from January 2008 to January 2009, including a year-end bonus of $2.25 million that he received just days before coming to work at the White House -- though well after he had already served in a key post in the transition. Froman was a senior executives at Citigroup's Alternative Investment division, which "ran up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses [in 2008] on their esoteric collection of investments, including real estate funds and private highway construction projects, even as they collected seven-figure salaries and bonuses."
* David A. Lipton, a presidential special assistant who also serves on both the national security and economic councils, made $1.5 million from Citigroup in 2008, managing its Global Country Risk group -- another shining Citigroup success. He received a bonus in 2009, right around the time he started work at the White House, of $762,000.
* Jacob J. Lew, a deputy secretary of state, is another key player in international economics. He, like Forman, was at top officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments, earning $1.1 million in 2008 - plus an as-yet undisclosed bonus in 2009.
* Gene Sperling, a top adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in 2008 earned $887,727 from Goldman Sachs simply for providing "advice on charitable giving." He also made $158,000 for speeches mostly to financial companies.
* Lee Sachs, another top Geithner aide, "reported more than $3 million in salary and partnership income from Mariner Investment Group, a New York hedge fund." When he took his new job, he reported that he was still owed a bonus where the value was "not ascertainable."
* Lewis Alexander, yet another top Geithner aide, is the former chief economist at Citigroup, for which he was paid $2.4 million in 2008 and the first few months of 2009.
* Mark Patterson, Geithner's chief of staff, was one of the top lobbyists at Goldman Sachs before joining the Obama campaign. He took in what seemed at first glance to be a relatively modest-by-Goldman-standards salary of $637,230 in 2008. But it turns out that was only for three months' work -- he left Goldman in early April. Until then, his title had been vice president for government relations, and he acted as a lobbyist on a wide range of issues including tax treatment of corporate reorganization transactions, nonbinding shareholder votes on executive compensation, and over-the-counter energy derivatives.
That's just a partial list. And hovering somewhere just slightly offstage is the man who made it all possible, the great role model, mentor, and iconic door-revolver Robert Rubin. Rubin went from running Goldman Sachs to the Clinton Treasury Department and back to Citigroup. As Robert Kuttner wrote at Treasury, Rubin was one of the "key Democratic architects of the extreme financial deregulation that brought the economy to this pass. At Citi, he was one of the grand strategists of the speculation in securitized loans and off-balance-sheet gimmicks that has brought Citi to the edge of bankruptcy."
Nevertheless, Rubin managed to leave having earned $126 million for his trouble. His proteges now run the country. And Rubin recently had the gall to author an article called How To Make Capitalism Work Again, for Newseek (which had the gall to print it.)
Voters Who Lost Faith In Dodd Wouldn't Trust Obama's Economics Team Either
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/15/voters-who-lost-faith-in_n_424834.html