New Obama Chief of Staff: Former Hedge Fund Exec at CITI, Made Money off Mortgage Defaults...

President Obama's first chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once sat on the
board of troubled federal mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Bill Daley, the
president's chief of staff whose departure was announced today, was
previously a top executive at financial firm J.P. Morgan Chase &
Co. So of course there should be little surprise that Obama's latest
chief of staff, announced today by the president himself, also has deep
ties to the financial industry himself.
From
2006-2008, Jack Lew was chief operating officer of Citibank's
alternative investments division. And it was his division that made
billions of dollars betting "U.S. homeowners would not be able to make
their mortgage payments," as the Huffington Post reported.
The piece also reported: “Lew made millions at Citi, including a
bonus of nearly $950,000 in 2009 just a few months after the bank
received billions of dollars in a taxpayer rescue, according to
disclosure forms filed with the federal government. The bank is still
partly owned by taxpayers.”
Of course, one should not begrudge Lew his personal, professional,
and financial successes. But one might wonder what kind of message the
president is sending with this appointment.
“I welcome constructive input from folks in the financial sector. But
what we’ve seen so far, in recent weeks, is an army of industry
lobbyists from Wall Street descending on Capitol Hill to try and block
basic and common-sense rules of the road that would protect our economy
and the American people,” Obama said in 2010. “So if these folks want a fight, that’s a fight I’m ready to have.”



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