Obama’s Wall Street-Friendly Cabinet, "Gang of Five" Departs to Wall St. for the BIG BUCKS

[KoKo]

(Good Riddance!)

----------

by Ryan Chittum

"...a dispiriting series of parting kisses from the press to five of the principle figures in the Obama administration’s Wall Street-friendly response to the financial crisis: SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami, Justice Department criminal division head Lanny Breuer, SEC chief Mary Schapiro, National Economic Council chair Larry Summers, and Geithner.

Here’s where they’ve ended up:

— Khuzami took a $5 million a year job at corporate law firm Kirkland & Ellis after a six-month wait. Kirkland & Ellis represents such Wall Street firms as Morgan Stanley, UBS, American Express, and Bank of America, the latter of which got a wrist slap from Khuzami and the SEC for lying to investors—one so light that a federal judge raised a stink over it.

— Breuer, two months after leaving DOJ, went through the revolving door to his old firm Covington & Burling and makes $4 million a year as the firm’s vice chair. Covington represents a Who’s Who of the Wall Street firms Breuer failed to prosecute.

— Schapirojoined the board of General Electric, a company she wrist-slapped for accounting fraud in 2009, failing to prosecute any individuals despite finding that “GE, acting primarily through senior corporate accountants, engaged in knowing or reckless fraudulent activities resulting in numerous materially false and misleading statements or omissions.” Worse, Schapiro also joinedPromontory Financial Group, a sort of shadow regulator that lets former SEC types cash in to help Wall Street “navigate” regulatory structures. Her pay is undisclosed but surely well into the seven digits.

— Larry Summers is back at DE Shaw, though no word if he’s still making $5 million a year for working one day a week. He’s also advising Citigroup, Nasdaq, Lending Club, and Silicon Valley biggie Andreesen Horowitz for untold pay.

— And now Tim Geithner becomes president of private-equity firm Warburg Pincus for an undisclosed pay package that will be in the many, many millions of dollars a year. Hey, at least, it’s not Goldman.

Even that was predictable, though. Here’s something I wrote in February on Geithner and the rash of resignations from the Obama administration:

"As the exit profiles stop, the real fun begins: Watching where these guys end up next. Presumably, the days of waltzing right into Citigroup, say, from high public office, for $15 million-a-year gigs with no responsibility, are over for now. More likely: A six-month break to disinterest the press followed by a sinecure at Cadwalader or a return to Covington or some such."

I’ll end with former FDIC chief Sheila Bair, talking to American Banker editor Neil Weinberg earlier this year:

“The capture, a lot of people say, is bipartisan. And when I say capture, I’m talking about cognitive capture. It’s not so much about corruption. It’s just listening too much to large financial institutions and the people who represent them and not enough to the people out on Main Street who want this fixed.”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/18-7

[vi5]

1. So shocking!

Insert apologist excuses here:

"It was to know what the enemy was doing!!!"
"He needed insiders to be able to change things!!!!"
"These are the smartest people in their fields...he can't hold it against them who they workd for!!!!"

No wonder nothing has gotten done economically or in the financial sector.

[WowSeriously]

14. Pick for the choices below:

1. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

2. You play the hand you're dealt

3. We're playing chess while they're playing checkers

4. All of the above

[Laelth]

2. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[NuclearDem]

3. But he gave a speech or two about the middle class!

[Wilms]

4. Don't think of it as good-bye.

If Hillary wins, they'll be back.

[polichick]

5. Yep - same ol' shit, over and over again. Hey Dem voters: WAKE UP!

[Demo_Chris]

8. Whoa! You either vote for them or Romney wins!!!!

Need I say more?

[polichick]

11. That kind of fearmongering is how we got here.

[pocoloco]

23. Romney and the 1% never lost!!

Busy collecting the spoils at this moment!

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. Hillary's primary purpose is to elect President Christie,

and in the process they will never have left. Again. Forever.

[woo me with science]

19. I think you're onto the game.

Now, let's throw a Sanders or a Warren into the mix and get the nation to stand up and scream, "NO."

[Egalitarian Thug]

21. They don't even have to bother to change it up, knowing that the suckers will

just nod their heads and do as they're told.

This very topic, a hypothetical Presidential run over a year prior to the mid-term elections, demonstrates how easily they are manipulated through media. They insist on ignoring all the men behind the curtain.

[woo me with science]

25. How do the men behind the curtain get exposed?

They have rigged the entire system. They have restructured elections. They have rigged government and the courts. They have purchased the media. They have dismantled the Constitution. They have crippled investigative journalism. They have implemented a surveillance state and a police state. And they have impoverished millions of us.

What do we have left besides our voices and our numbers?

[Egalitarian Thug]

36. You're right of course, but a large part of the blame belongs right here with us.

(and by us, I mean the vast majority that neither know nor care about anything 'political').

We elected these parasites and con-artists and then looked the other way for decades as they plied their trade at our expense. George Carlin was right, we hire and pay them to lie to us, because we don't like hearing anything that bears any resemblance to truth.

[rhett o rick]

39. The Powers To Be are laughing their heads off. What if Clinton and Christie both switch

parties? Christie is Thing 1 and Clinton is Thing 2. Now what do we do?

[Egalitarian Thug]

46. What indeed. That's the question we're still wrestling with right now.

I have to say that I'm leaning toward doing a farewell tour and bidding the U.S. goodbye.

[rhett o rick]

47. I doubt it. I think you are going to, as Margret Cho put it, "stay and fight" nm

[rhett o rick]

44. You beat me to it. Presidents come and go, the Powers To Be are always with us. nm

[progressoid]

7. Good riddance indeed.

Too bad it took this long. A lot of damage has been done already.

[rhett o rick]

40. No reason to think it will change. Another group will get their shot at the golden ring. nm

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. The best "democracy" money can buy...for the 1%.

[geek tragedy]

10. Wall Street can just buy most, if not all, of anyone of prominence in economics.

It's depressing, but being offered a middle class living grading term papers and attending faculty meetings vs making enough to retire in 6 months is just too much for most is no comparison at all.

And while it's easy to sit and bemoan the corrupt nature of individuals who cash in, that ignores the structural problem. Most people will take a huge payday over a very modest one. It's one thing to be principled in supporting Elizabeth Warren/some other progressive champion vs Hillary Clinton, it's another to leave $25 million on the table over those same principles.

[Scuba]

12. Big bucks? Well, they sure earned it.

[ReRe]

13. K&R

Need to kick this just as a friendly reminder to the Grand Bargainers amongst us.

Main Street 2014! Main Street 2014! Main Street 2014! Main Street 2014! Main Street 2014! Main Street 2014!

[xchrom]

15. du rec.

[liberal_at_heart]

16. bastards.

[MannyGoldstein]

17. This is pretty surpring. Frankly, I'm disappointed.

[rhett o rick]

41. I am sure they left with us in good hands. The next group will come thru

looting as they go.

[pscot]

18. I think you left out a many

on that Geithner pay package. But who's counting.

[Sognefjord]

20. Take all and put in a dungeon.

Throw key into nearby lake.

[rhett o rick]

43. You'd just be chopping off some of the heads of Hydra. More will come to replace them. nm

[Rex]

22. Wall Street owns the block.

Politics is just an inconvenience for people trying to get rich off the backs of the poor.

[cherokeeprogressive]

24. Quelle surprise.

[bvar22]

26. WTF... Nobody promised you "change" or anything!

[font size=5]
The DLC New Team
[/font]
(Screen Capped from the DLC Website 2009)

[CanonRay]

27. Service rendered, time to cash in

It's the American Way!

[FarCenter]

28. Warburg Pincus isn't on Wall Street -- they're in Midtown at 450 Lexington.

[zeemike]

29. Well Wall Street isn't on Wall Street anymore.

Wall Street is not a place but a concept.

[amandabeech]

45. Umm, yeah, and KKR used to be on 57th or so.

Maybe they still are, but they're still a bunch of amoral vultures.

[truedelphi]

30. And more good news, unless there is a general uprising,

The Oval Office, and members of Congress will continue to be the lapdogs and the puppets of the One Percent.

I mean, c'mon, what's so bad about policies that continue to allow 49 cents out of every dollar of profit to drop directly into the coffers of Big Financial Firms?

And what's so wrong about letting the Bankers transfer the middle class person's equity and wealth into their laps, while maintaining full control over the economic, and even the legal system, of this once great country?

[Divernan]

31. Written by a former WSJ reporter; current deputy editor of The Audit, CJR's business section

The Columbia Journalism Review is the bi-monthly publication of the top ranking and most respected Journalism program in the world. Doubtless some bots will be around shortly to attempt to discredit the whole thing because Chittum once shook hands with W, or some such nonsense.

Go to the link for some very intelligent readers' comments, including, but not limited to:

"All the well dressed, well educated, well groomed, well spoken crooks mentioned here belong to an organization called S.C.U.M. (Sociopaths Collecting Uber Money). Obama and his wife were just asked to join. They are being sponsored by Dianne Feinstein. The true Green Party."

"Bill Clinton has averaged $10 million per year income from "corporate speaking fees" since he left office. Daughter Chelsea walked into a $200,000 per year Wall Street gig straight out of college."

"Obama's stream of Wall Street appointees and unprecedented corporate welfare programs will assure that the same pot of gold awaits the Obama family in 2017."

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat

[KoKo]

33. Thanks, Divernan, for doing more Research on this that it's TRUTH and not Spin!

How anyone can deny that the "Gang of Five" will Profit off their time in Obama Administration sort of defies logic.

And your links prove this isn't this poster posting from some RW Source. Like "Common Dreams" should EVER be called a RW Source when they know what the "Deal Is" anyway. But "Attacks are always here..."

[Divernan]

38. The bot attacks in some threads (not this one so far) are beyond bizarre.

Last edited Wed Nov 20, 2013, 07:09 AM - Edit history (1)

They make up &/or falsely attribute language which they then attack; they attack posters for statements in subthreads by other posters; they ignore civil requests for links or documentation to their bizarre claims; and so on. They remind one of those snakes which keep snapping their mouths after their heads have been cut off.

I occasionally took continuing legal ed classes in the art of negotiating settlements. It's all about arriving at a realistic financial value for damages/injuries suffered and allocating responsibility for compensation among the parties. Because over 95% of civil claims settle without going to trial, negotiation skills are more important than courtroom performance skills. Like one injured plaintiff versus 3 defendants: a general contractor, a subcontractor and a supplier of a defective part. What the instructor cautioned us about was when you run into a party who is either insane or pretends insanity by refusing, in the face of overwhelming physical evidence and testimony of expert witnesses, to acknowledge any liability.

When in comes to bots, my question is whether they are truly insane to post nonsense and gibberish, or whether they are crazy like a fox and collecting $$$ per post when they post over 40 inane replies in a single thread.

[woo me with science]

35. [phone]

Thank you for posting this.

[Fumesucker]

32. Do The Wall Street Shuffle

[Enrique]

34. why did a Maoist hire all those people?

i'm confused.

[KoKo]

37. I don't know, myself...

[rhett o rick]

42. There is really only two ways to look at this. One, Pres Obama is in it up to his ears, or two,

the president really doesnt have much power when he gets to the WH. Maybe Pres Obama would like to fix the economy but when he got into office, some how he was convinced to leave economic systems the hell alone.

Although his love affairs with Summers and Pritzker, tends to make me think he isnt our friend.


The media crucifies him for a website malfunction yet ignore this. We're screwed.