Obama is always touting how ethical his administration is.
What a load!
WASHINGTON -- While Goldman Sachs' lawyers negotiated with the Securities and Exchange Commission over potentially explosive civil fraud charges, Goldman's chief executive visited the White House at least four times.
White House logs show that Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein traveled to Washington for at least two events with President Barack Obama, whose 2008 presidential campaign received $994,795 in donations from Goldman's political action committee, its employees and their relatives. He also met twice with Obama's top economic adviser, Larry Summers.
No evidence has surfaced to suggest that Blankfein or any other Goldman executive raised the SEC case with the president or his aides. SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro said in a statement Wednesday that the SEC doesn't coordinate enforcement actions with the White House or other political bodies.
Meanwhile, however, Goldman is retaining former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig as a member of its legal team. In addition, when he worked as an investment banker in Chicago a decade ago, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advised one client who also retained Goldman as an adviser on the same $8.2 billion deal.
Goldman's connections to the White House and the Obama administration are raising eyebrows at a time when Washington and Wall Street are dueling over how to overhaul regulation of the financial world.
Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist, said that "almost everything that the White House has done has been haunted by the personnel and the money of Goldman . . . as well as the suspicion that the White House, particularly early on, was pulling its punches out of deference to Goldman and its war chest.
What was Blankfein doing at the White House? Why did he visit?
"No evidence has surfaced to suggest that Blankfein or any other Goldman executive raised the SEC case with the president or his aides."
I'd like to know the evidence suggesting that Blankfein raised issues other than the SEC case when he was hanging out at the White House.
Certainly, these four visits may have been social calls, just shooting the breeze.
But it looks bad.
1 comment:
Should we consider a Corporate Windfall Profits Tax in order to balance the U.S. federal budget? Please share your opinion at www.dyslexinomicon.blogspot.com
In 1965, even after Kennedy's historic tax cuts, corporate taxes made up 21.8%(1) of federal revenues, the marginal corporate income tax rate was 70%(2) and unemployment was at 4.5%(3). But as of 2007 corporations slashed their share down to 14.4% of federal revenues while shoving an additional 4% of the burden on individual tax payers. Currently the marginal corporate income tax rate is 35%, and unemployment hovers around 10%.
Check it out yourself:
(1) Federal burden sharing by sector:
www.whitehouse.gov/omb/Budget/historicals , Office of Management and Budget Table 2.2
(2) Marginal federal income tax rates: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States for marginal tax rates,
(3) Unemployment history: www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/tables10.html , Table B-42 Civilian Unemployment Rates 1962-2009
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