By LARRY LIGHT MONEYWATCH December 14, 2016, 5:30 AM
Once reviled as the epitome of Wall Street’s malignant sway over Washington, likened to a vampire squid and blasted by candidate Donald Trump, Goldman Sachs (GS) today is more influential than ever. With the appointment of Goldman’s second-in-command Gary Cohn as President-elect Trump’s top economic adviser, rather than being run out of town the firm is back riding high.
As the designated director of the National Economic Council, Cohn joins Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman partner who Mr. Trump has nominated as Treasury secretary, in the pantheon of Washington power. The NEC oversees economic policymaking in the White House. That makes Goldman veterans the chief architects of the new administration’s economic initiatives, ranging from tax code overhaul to revamping banking regulation.
Cohn and Mnuchin are the latest in a long line of high-ranking federal officials from Goldman that stretches back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration -- and gives rise to the mocking sobriquet Government Sachs.
The ascension of the two men comes amid a robust run in Goldman’s share price since Election Day. Its stock is the strongest performer in the Dow Jones industrials index starting Nov. 8, up 32 percent and accounting for about a third of the blue-chip benchmark’s record-setting advance, according to the Bespoke Investment Group...
