MSNBC: William Daley resigning as Chief of Staff

[OKNancy]

23. Did anyone even bother to look up anything about Lew?

of course not. It's just so cool to be a negative-Nellie and jerk those knees.

He did indeed work for Citigroup for 3 years.

But before that.....

Lew grew up in New York City. As a 12-year-old, he campaigned for Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential election. "It was also my introduction to seeing that you could make a difference in people's lives through politics," he told the New York Times in 1999.

Lew's faculty adviser at Carleton College was Paul Wellstone, an outspoken liberal who eventually represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate until dying in a 2002 plane crash. Lew graduated from Harvard and earned a law degree from Georgetown.

He worked as an aide to Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) from 1974 to 1975. He then was a senior policy adviser to House Speaker Thomas (Tip) P. O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) from 1979 to 1987. "I grew up in many ways on the Hill in Mr. O'Neill's office," Lew told the Times.

Lew served as Deputy Director of Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton Administration from 1995 to 1998 and Director from 1998 to 2001. He served as executive vice president of New York University from 2001 to 2006.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/jack-lew-bill-daley-white-house-chief-of-staff_n_1195011.html

Edit to add: The Atlantic calls him and "outspoken liberal"
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/who-is-new-white-house-chief-of-staff-jack-lew/251110/