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TechnoratiIt’s Not the Lobbying, It’s the Agreeing!
Now it's official: Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, will be the new Treasury Secretary's chief of staff despite Barack Obama's supposedly strict new rules on lobbying and ethics.
Patterson lobbied for Goldman from 2005 until April of last year on a whole host of issues including credit default swaps, credit rating agencies, and sovereign wealth funds, the bank-driven deregulation of which brought us to the current debacle.
Now Patterson will be the point person on who gains access to the Treasury Sec's ear. But Patterson is hardly the heart of the problem. Geithner's ear is. To give a bit of background. Geithner's first job was with Kissinger Associates, where he worked with the former Secretary of State. From there, he went to the U.S. Treasury Department, where he rose in esteem and became an aide to Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin -- two pro-bank, pro-deregulation Treasury Secretaries.
After Treasury, Rubin went on to head up Goldman Sachs and Citi-group. His mentee, Geithner, graduated to the New York Fed, where among his advisers were E. Gerald Corrigan, a managing director of Goldman Sachs, former Goldman CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr.; even John Thain, the not-so-dearly departed CEO of Merrill Lynch.
Geithner's New York Fed hosted the key meetings that structured the Wall Street bail-out last fall. Everyone around the table had a deep investment in the decisions the government made and most made out: Goldman Sachs, for example, benefited handsomely from the bailout of AIG, its largest trading partner and Goldman was an early recipient of government largesse. Once the Treasury (under former Goldman CEO Paulson) agreed to allow the investment firm to restructure itself as a bank, bank Goldman applied for -- and received -- $10 billion from taxpayers. One can safely assume it's a first installment.
Now the next step of the bailout is in the works. Wednesday's New York Times business section headline reads, "Geithner Sets Limits on Lobbying. " But even a water-tight ban on lobbyists would hardly help us. With Geithner, Patterson and Summers/Rubin ruling the roost, it's not the lobbying -- meaning efforts to persuade -- that stands between we the people and change we can believe in. It's the stultifying level of agreement.
15 Comments so far
Show Alledweg
when obama was being straggling with clinton in his last weeks for the party nomination, even than he like she, had his speeches on rhetoric and not on substance - about him: no visionary and doesn't comprehend the differences the economy is now, from the soviet era, not to mention the roosevelt era. edweg
they select so we may elect.
Regardless of the lobbyists, it becomes more clear by the day that Mr. Obama apparently believes in the flaky neoliberal economic theories of crackpots Geithner and Summers. The US is so doomed.
What's being done needs a new term:
Let's call it "pre-emptive lobbying."
Defined as the placing of "former" lobbyists in high-level government positions, hence eliminating the need for any actual lobbying.
It's a double-bonus for corporations, cause they get one of their boys on the inside at taxpayer expense, thereby negating 90% of their lobbyist payroll.
Now that's sweet change we can believe in...
or call it cutting out the middleman.
Sioux Rose
FRANK: Excellent point! (or satire)
It seems to me there comes a point where all this quid pro quo with such vast sums involved OUGHT qualify for a R.I.C.O lawsuit. Can justice win given the make-up of the Supreme Court and the fact that our new president seems as much a sell-out as the last few? Wow. Politics is now just a facelift, the big money operators have seized the wheels of government and are making way to our assets with or without consenusal agreement. It is too unbelievable for words, watching the daily parade of such corruption continue. Bush lowered the bar, of course, but where is the will to change this nation's lost course?
As once was heard in crowded movie houses, "Is there a doctor in the house?" I am making a plea for, "Is there any good news in our audience?" The weight of negativity is astounding! (And unfortunately, fact-based!)
A lobbyist is a lobbyist, PERIOD ! Campbell Brown was correct when she nailed Obama for showing his hypocrisy on this matter.
davidpeace, I assume your final sentence was facetious. But I respectfully ask that you not undermine your eminently sensible comments by such throwaway self-deprecation.
· Yr Obd't Servant
actually it was a combination of disclaimer and sarcasm...
On the piece by Betsy Moon about Molly Flanders (What Would Molly Think?), I said that I thought she would be screaming at us to keep on our toes. This is precisely the reason why! I still wonder how much of the financial crisis was engineered or “gently” steered to make things worse. I think this because the real owners of this country could see the writing on the wall as well as the rest of us and could see that the next president was not likely to be a Republican, nor would the Congress be controlled by the same. Now they can keep people in the government scared into putting their own right back in government and keep it to business as usual. Or maybe I'm just a conspiracy nut.
Sioux Rose
DAVID: It doesn't make much difference if the persons being appointed were among those who AGREED with the deregulation even if it was hammered into place by Phil Graham, and Clinton advertently or otherwise signed it into law. The "d" or the "r" means nothing if you have the foxes guarding the hen house. These creeps all made millions through Wall St or banking firms and now they get to decide who gets how many billions? It's despicable beyond belief when you consider how many people are losing their homes or unable to get health care, when you recognize the "next" war is being planned for (upping the ante) in Afghanistan... I mean the dictionary does not have a word obscene enough to encompass the magnitude of sins and amoral policies being allowed to continue as business as usual! This after the ship has hit the iceberg!
You mean Molly Ivins, not Molly Flanders.
Ephraim
There you go again, going around actually reading words! (lol)
you're right, sorry. And sorry to Ms. Ivins.
How refreshing to have all those new foxes watching the henhouse for us.
I'm reminded of an old gag tune called "I Wonder What Would Happen If..." I saw on the Smothers Brothers show:
What would happen if crime really DID pay? The same people would still have all the money.
http://davedubya.com