The Bankers on Obama’s Team

The latest round of Wall Street muckety-mucks now in charge of regulation.

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GOLDMAN SACHS CEO turned Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wasn’t the first, or the last, to use the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. Here’s a short list of Obama officials who got their start in the private sector—many, like Paulson, at “Government Sachs.”

OFFICIAL

CURRENT ROLE IN WASHINGTON

PREVIOUS ROLE ON WALL STREET

Neal Wolin

Deputy secretary of the treasury (Tim Geithner’s No. 2)

Exec at one of the largest insurance and investment firms

Mark Patterson

Treasury secretary’s chief of staff

Goldman Sachs lobbyist

Gene Sperling

Counselor to the treasury secretary

Made nearly $900,000 advising Goldman Sachs

Larry Summers

Obama’s chief economic adviser

Made $5 million as managing director of a hedge fund

Rahm Emanuel

White House chief of staff

Made $16 million as a partner at a Chicago investment bank

Herbert Allison

Assistant secretary of the treasury (oversees TARP)

Longtime exec at Merrill Lynch; headed Fannie Mae

Kim Wallace

Assistant secretary of the treasury for legislative affairs

Managing director at Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers

Karthik Ramanathan

Acting assistant treasury secretary for financial markets

Foreign exchange dealer at Goldman Sachs

Matthew Kabaker

Deputy assistant secretary of the treasury

Made $5.8 million at the Blackstone Group in 2008-2009

Lewis Alexander

Counselor to the treasury secretary

Chief economist at Citigroup; paid $2.4 million in 2008-2009

Adam Storch

Managing executive of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement

VP of Goldman Sachs’ Business Intelligence Group

Lee Sachs

Counselor to the treasury secretary

Made more than $3 million at a New York hedge fund

Gary Gensler

Chairman of Commodity Futures Trading Commission

18 years at Goldman Sachs, where he made partner

Michael Froman

Deputy assistant to Obama, deputy nat’l security adviser

Managing director of a Citigroup investment arm

This chart is part of Mother Jones’ coverage of the financial crisis, one year later.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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