General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIt's Festivus - Air your grievances here.
Stop texting while moving. Get off to the side out of everybody's way.
GeeNeeUs
(40 posts)KentuckyWoman
(6,697 posts)NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)But people need to be less PC around here.
whatthehey
(3,660 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)By Felix Salmon December 11, 2009
Michael Froman is one of those behind-the-scenes technocrats who never quite makes it into full public view. But according to Matt Taibbi, hes one of the most egregious examples up there with Bob Rubin, literally weve yet seen of the way the revolving door works between business and government generally, and between Citigroup and Treasury in particular.
Im not sure how much of this information is new, but a lot of it was new to me, especially the bit about Froman leading the search for the presidents new economic team while he was still pulling down a multi-million-dollar salary at Citigroup, no less. Apologies for quoting at length:
Leading the search for the presidents new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obamas biggest fundraisers, bundling $200,000 in contributions and introducing the candidate to a host of heavy hitters chief among them his mentor Bob Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Froman had served as chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, and had followed his boss when Rubin left the Clinton administration to serve as a senior counselor to Citigroup (a massive new financial conglomerate created by deregulatory moves pushed through by Rubin himself).
Incredibly, Froman did not resign from the bank when he went to work for Obama: He remained in the employ of Citigroup for two more months, even as he helped appoint the very people who would shape the future of his own firm. And to help him pick Obamas economic team, Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, a former Clinton diplomat who happens to be Bob Rubins son. At the time, Jamies dad was still earning roughly $15 million a year working for Citigroup, which was in the midst of a collapse brought on in part because Rubin had pushed the bank to invest heavily in mortgage-backed CDOs and other risky instruments
On November 23rd, 2008, a deal is announced in which the government will bail out Rubins messes at Citigroup with a massive buffet of taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees No Citi executives are replaced, and few restrictions are placed on their compensation. Its the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubins fuck-up-rich tenure at Citi. If you had any doubts at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street, former labor secretary Robert Reich declares when the bailout is announced, your doubts should be laid to rest.
It is bad enough that one of Bob Rubins former protégés from the Clinton years, the New York Fed chief Geithner, is intimately involved in the negotiations, which unsurprisingly leave the Federal Reserve massively exposed to future Citi losses. But the real stunner comes only hours after the bailout deal is struck, when the Obama transition team makes a cheerful announcement: Timothy Geithner is going to be Barack Obamas Treasury secretary!
Geithner, in other words, is hired to head the U.S. Treasury by an executive from Citigroup Michael Froman before the ink is even dry on a massive government giveaway to Citigroup that Geithner himself was instrumental in delivering. In the annals of brazen political swindles, this one has to go in the all-time Fuck-the-Optics Hall of Fame.
Wall Street loved the Citi bailout and the Geithner nomination so much that the Dow immediately posted its biggest two-day jump since 1987, rising 11.8 percent. Citi shares jumped 58 percent in a single day, and JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley soared more than 20 percent, as Wall Street embraced the news that the governments bailout generosity would not die with George W. Bush and Hank Paulson.
How much influence did Froman have over the appointment of Geithner as Treasury secretary? Geithner, who wanted to become Treasury secretary and who as New York Fed president was a central (if not the central) figure in orchestrating the massive Citigroup bailout just after the election, knew what Fromans job was in the Obama transition team, and knew that Froman was a senior executive at Citigroup.
CONTINUED...
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/12/11/michael-froman-and-the-revolving-door/
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)I think she's a crook who will say anything to get power.
And I tend to believe victims of sexual violence, so I have grave doubts about Bill, even assuming a couple of the accounts are politically motivated. There are just too many accounts, too varied, and for too long. I think Hillary enables Bill to be a predator.
I think she did the wrong thing in Libya and is a neo-conservative interventionalist very similar to McCain, Bush II, and about half the Republicans running.
I am aggrieved by those who say we have to vote for her because she successfully rigged the primary system. No, the Democrats need to fix the machine, get real candidates, or be ready to lose at the ballot box, or they will keep treating us like slaves.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)I just want our nation to stop acting stupid. I just want our government to act like they are a legitimate rulers of the American people. They were not born into this role. They rule only at our approval.
Snow Leopard
(348 posts)you really are not that important. :^)
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Next best candidates for triggering worldwide Armageddon:
Islamic supremacism and One-party-rule Chinese nationalism.
Why can't we all make nice around a giant Festivus pole?
FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)No one wants to discuss how to tackle it or even discuss it.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)and thanks for making me feel like the cheapest bastard in the world because I don't have a dollar bill on me.
Also, DU jurors are underpaid. Give them a 20% raise.