Speaking at an event in Osawatomie, Kan., on Tuesday, President Obama decried the “breathtaking greed” of wealthy Wall Street executives that had “plunged our economy and the world into a crisis.” It was his most explicit effort yet to harness the alleged anxieties of the Occupy Wall Street “movement” about a perpetually aggrieved “99 percent” pitted against a phenomenally wealthy and cold-hearted “1 percent.”
If the president (himself a multi-millionaire) wants to mount a crusade against Wall Street and the “1 percent,” however, he need look no further than the current and former members of his own White House staff.
Peter Orszag — former White House budget director
Orszag left the administration in July 2010 to become vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup, where he earns an estimated $2 million to $3 million per year.
Rahm Emanuel — former White House chief of staff
Emanuel, who left the administration in October 2010 to run for mayor of Chicago, raked in more than $16 million between 1999 and 2002, when he served as managing director at investment firm Wasserstein Perella. During that same time, Emanuel served a 14-month stint on the Freddie Mac board of directors, for which he was paid more than $300,000 in total compensation, including stock. In his new book Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer reveals that Emanuel reportedly sold up to $250,000 of his Freddie Mac stock on Feb. 21, 2003, just days before it suffered a 10 percent loss amid rumors — which were subsequently confirmed — that the company was under criminal investigation for inflating earnings.
Larry Summers — former National Economic Council director
After resigning his post as Harvard president, in which he earned more than $600,000 annually in salary and benefits, Summers became a managing director at D. E. Shaw, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, with nearly $30 billion in assets. In 2008, prior to joining the administration, Summers took home more than $5 million from D. E. Shaw and an additional $2.7 million in speaking fees from companies such as JP Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. Summers left his White House post at the end of 2010 and returned to teach at Harvard. He is also a special adviser to the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Michael Froman — deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs
A friend and Harvard Law classmate of Obama, Froman played a leading role in the formation of the White House economic team. Prior to joining the administration, Froman was a managing director of infrastructure and sustainable-development investment at Citigroup, where he earned nearly $7.5 million in 2008 alone, including a year-end bonus of $2.2 million, and another $2 million buyout of his stake in a company investment fund (the Wall Street Journal reported that he had requested at least $10 million). Froman was also a top Obama fundraiser, raising more than $200,000 for the campaign.
Neal Wolin — deputy Treasury secretary
Wolin came to the administration from Hartford Financial, where, as president and chief operating officer of property-casualty operations, he earned an estimated $4.5 million in total compensation.
Louis Caldera — former director, White House Military Office
Before joining the administration in 2009, Caldera served on the board of directors of IndyMac from 2002 until July 2008, when its assets were seized by the federal government. In his final two years of service on the board, Caldera pulled in nearly $500,000 in total compensation.
Tom Donilon — national security adviser
Prior to joining the Obama administration, Donilon reported earning $3.9 million as a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm O’Melveny & Myers, advising major clients such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Before that, he was executive vice president for law and policy at Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005, and he continues to receive pension payments from the company.
Gary Gensler — chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
A former undersecretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, Gensler topped Washingtonian magazine’s 2009 list of the wealthiest members of the Obama administration, listing total assets as high as $62 million. Gensler spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs, becoming a partner at age 30 and eventually rising to the position of co-head of the finance division. His ties to Wall Street ran so deep that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) attempted to block his nomination to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Of course, it would be remiss to exempt from this list someone with even closer ties to the president — the first lady herself, Michelle Obama. As Kevin Williamson relates in the latest print issue of National Review, Mrs. Obama, speaking at a 2008 campaign event, lectured a group of women in Zanesville, Ohio (median household income: $28,854), to “move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry.” “Don’t go into corporate America,” she said. “You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse.”
Mrs. Obama made almost $450,000 between 2004 and 2005, when she served as “vice president for community and external affairs” and head of the “business diversity program” at the University of Chicago Medical Center. When she left in 2007 to assist her husband’s campaign, the hospital kept her on the payroll, with a $63,000 salary.
It is only fitting that just as President Obama was delivering his speech in Kansas, the Senate Agriculture Committee was voting (unanimously) to subpoena billionaire and former Democratic politician Jon Corzine — Obama’s “Wall Street Guy” and top campaign bundler (more than $500,000 raised so far this year) — over his role in the $1.2 billion investment fraud surrounding the collapse of brokerage firm MF Global. Corzine was considered a prime candidate to replace Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Rest assured, when Geithner ultimately does decide to step down, his own lucrative payday awaits.
— Andrew Stiles is the Franklin Center’s 2011 Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellow.