From Deal Book:
Wall Street has long stacked its ranks with Washington types.
It is the elephant in the room of White House grand bargains: after building a reputation and Rolodex in politics, the wise man moves on — or in many cases, back — to the financial industry to make a killing.
A decade ago, a former Treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin, left the Clinton administration to become a senior adviser and board member at Citigroup — collecting a $10 million a year paycheck with no management responsibility.
On Thursday, Peter R. Orszag, President Obama’s first budget director and a protégé of Mr. Rubin, followed in his mentor’s footsteps and joined Citi’s investment banking group as a vice chairman. Mr. Orszag, 41, is the second cabinet official to join Citi this month, and his appointment comes days after the Treasury Department’s $10.5 billion stock offering helped further extricate the bailed out bank from Washington.
- Commentary from James Fallows.
- A response.
