[video=youtube;Z2DG7ppb_QA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2DG7ppb_QA[/video]
Just, A few to get started.
Dianna Farrell:Obama Administration: Deputy Director, National Economic Council
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Financial Analyst
Stephen Friedman:Obama Administration: Chairman, Presidents Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Board Member (Chairman, 1990-94; Director, 2005-)
Gary Gensler:Obama Administration: Commissioner, Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Partner and Co-head of Finance
Robert Hormats:Obama Administration: Undersecretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, State Department
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs Group
Philip Murphy:Obama Administration: Ambassador to Germany
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Head of Goldman Sachs, Frankfurt
Mark Patterson:Obama Administration: Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Lobbyist 2005-2008; Vice President for Government Relations
John Thain:Obama Administration: Advisor to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner
Former Goldman Sachs Title: President and Chief Operating Officer (1999-2003)
In addition to Geithner, the TV ad stretches the truth by including photos of:
- Rahm Emanuel, the presidents first chief of staff. Its true, as the ad notes under his photo, that Emanuel reaped $16 million while working as an investment banker for Wasserstein Perella. But he worked there two and a half years. He spent nearly his entire professional life in politics and government. As Politico wrote, Emanuel worked on Paul Simons 1984 election to the U.S. Senate, served as a senior adviser and chief fundraiser for Richard M. Daley in 1989, and became a senior adviser to President Clinton in the 1990s. He was also a member of Congress from Illinois, and he is now the mayor of Chicago.
- Louis Caldera, former director of the White House Military Office. Its true that Caldera was a member of the board of directors for IndyMac Bancorp for six years, leaving in August 2008. Many public officials serve on the boards of major corporations. But his career has been in government and academia. He was a California assemblyman (1992-1997), chief operating officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service (1997 to 199, U.S. Army secretary under Clinton (1998-2001), and president of the University of New Mexico (2003-2006). Prior to his appointment, Caldera was a law professor at the University of New Mexico. He is now vice president of programs at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
- Jon Corzine, an ex-chief executive at Goldman Sachs and former New Jersey governor. Corzine is a true Wall Street executive, but the TV ad goes too far in claiming Corzine was Obamas adviser on the stimulus. Corzine, who endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008, was one of several people consulted by Obamas campaign on the economy during the general election. But in 2009, Corzine was preoccupied with reelection, which he lost. Obamas economic team was headed by Geithner and included Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council. Romer, Summers and Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, were the main players in shaping the stimulus bill, as detailed by the New Yorker magazine.
Padding Wall Street Inner Circle List
While the ads narrator focuses on these seven Wall Street executives, the names of 27 people scroll up the screen under the header of Obamas Wall Street Inner Circle. Its supposed to read like a Hall of Shame. But we found 14 of those names dont belong on the list including, as mentioned above, Geithner, Emanuel and Caldera.
Other names used to improperly pad the list include two Bush appointees: Stephen Friedman and Neel Kashkari, both former Goldman Sachs executives.
Bush
appointed Friedman to the Presidents Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 2001. He became
chairman in 2006 and served
until 2009. Likewise, Kashkari was the
interim assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability under Bush. Kashkari had been in charge of staffing TARP and helping to structure the governments investments, as the
Wall Street Journal reported. He was asked by the Obama administration to stay in his position for a limited time after the inauguration, and he
resigned in May 2009. He now works at
PIMCO.
Others who dont belong on the list are two men who never worked in the Obama administration: William Dudley and Adam Storch.
Dudley, a former chief economist at Goldman Sachs, replaced Geithner at the New York Fed. He was
selected by the New York Feds
board of directors after a
two-month search by an outside firm. Storch went from Goldman Sachs to the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he works in the Division of Enforcement. Obama did
appoint the SEC chairwoman, Mary Schapiro, but the agency itself was responsible for
Storchs hiring.
Then there is the curious case of Emil Michael a White House fellow,
class of 2009-2010. This supposed member of the presidents inner circle didnt even work at the White House. His assignment was at the Pentagon. He was just one of 13 fellows selected for a one-year stint in government. Very few of the fellows actually work in the Executive Office of the President.
One true insider on the list but not a Wall Street executive is former White House counsel Gregory Craig. After leaving the administration, Craig joined the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in
January 2010, and
one of his clients is Goldman Sachs. Hes a lawyer, not a Wall Street executive. Prior to working at the White House, Craig was a
partner in the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams and Connolly.
So, that means Craig was
retroactively made a member of Obamas Wall Street inner circle as was Peter Orszag, the former White House budget director.
Orszag had no Wall Street experience before
joining Citigroup after he left the administration. His
background is in government and public policy. Prior to joining the White House, Orszag headed the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (January 2007-November 200
and was an economist at the Brookings Institution (2001-2007).
As with Emanuel and Caldera, there were a few others on AFFs Wall Street inner circle list who made their careers in government or academia not Wall Street. They include:
- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, whose lengthy government resume includes being a congressional aide, a California congressman and a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton. He makes the list based on his six years serving on the New York Stock Exchange board of directors.
- Larry Summers, a former Harvard University president who served as treasurer under President Clinton. Summers, who headed Obamas National Economic Council, was managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw after he stepped down as president of Harvard University in 2006. But he spent nearly his entire professional life in government or academia.
- Diana Farrell, who worked under Summers at the National Economic Council. She worked just two years for Goldman Sachs in the late 1980s, from 1987 to 1989. Most of her career has been at the management consultant firm of McKinsey & Company, serving as the director of its research arm, McKinsey Global Institute. She was the institutes director from 2002-2008.
- Karen Kornbluh, who makes the list because she briefly worked about 20 years ago as an economist at Townsend-Greenspan & Co., where she started as an intern. Her background is almost exclusively in government. A graduate of Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government, Kornbluh has worked for Sen. John Kerry (1991-1994), the Federal Communications Commission (1995-1997), the Treasury Department (as a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton administration) and for Obama (2004-200. She is now the U.S. ambassador to OECD.
The ad wraps up by saying Wall Street sure supports President Obama. It includes a headline from a
Washington Post story to show that Obama is continuing to raise big money from Wall State execs despite the new Wall Street regulations. The
Post story was based on combined fundraising by the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. But as the story also noted, Obamas [fundraising] numbers look much worse compared with Republican Mitt Romney when the DNC funds are not included. Thats still the case. Center for Responsive Politics
data show Romney has received $12.5 million from those in the finance, insurance and real estate sector more than double Obamas take of $5.2 million.
Certainly, the American Future Fund has a point about the massive amounts of money the Obama campaign raised in 2008 from Wall Street executives. The jury is still out, though, as to whether such executives will support him more than the Republican nominee.
For sure, Obama has hired some Wall Street executives to serve in the White House including White House budget director
Jacob Lew (Citigroup) and former chief of staff
William Daley (J.P. Morgan Chase). He also has appointed some long-time investment bankers including ex-Goldman Sachs executives
Gary Gensler, who chairs the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and
Phil Murphy, U.S. ambassador to Germany. But in its zeal to build its case against Obama, American Future Fund strains credibility by padding its list of Obamas Wall Street Inner Circle with a majority of people who dont belong.
Eugene Kiely, with Scott Blackburn, Lalita Clozel and Dave Bloom