Obama Nominates Wife of Wall Street Donor Linked to Bailout Controversy as Ambassador to France
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On June 8, 2014 @ 6:47 pm In The Point | 3 Comments
Are you a titan of finance? Do you bundle huge contributions for Obama? Just wait till you hear the news.
There’s a big sale on. Prices are being slashed. Get your ambassadorship to a major European country for 50% off.
Ralph L. Schlosstein and Jane D. Hartley are ugly examples of how the left’s crony capitalist infrastructure works. Both husband and wife were in the Carter Administration.
Hartley, who is Obama’s nominee for Ambassador to France, went on to lucrative media and consulting gigs, but her husband was the one who really monetized his experience.
From 1977 to 1981, he worked in the Carter administration, first as deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department (the aforementioned Mr. Altman), where he was responsible for administering the New York City loan program and for advising the Treasury Secretary on municipal finance issues, and later as Associate Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff, where he was responsible for advising the President on urban policy, economic development and housing issues.
At Shearson Lehman in the 80s, Schlosstein, among other jobs, was head of the mortgage and savings institutions group… It was a time of great innovation in investible mortgage products.
Mr. Schlosstein started the firm’s interest rate swap business and led its Mortgage and Savings Institutions Group.
Schlosstein then went on to co-found BlackRock which got a sweet deal from the bailout.
Mr. Geithner has also faced scrutiny over how well taxpayers were served by his handling of another aspect of the bailout: three no-bid contracts the New York Fed awarded to BlackRock, a money management firm, to oversee troubled assets acquired by the bank.
BlackRock was well known to the Fed. Mr. Geithner socialized with Ralph L. Schlosstein, who founded the company and remains a large shareholder, and has dined at his Manhattan home.
Mr. Schlosstein said that while he and Mr. Geithner spoke frequently, BlackRock’s work for the Fed never came up.
After BlockRock, Schlosstein became President and CEO of Evercore which had handled the GM bailout and made big bucks doing it.
Evercore Partners, for instance, was enlisted by the government to find a buyer for GM. The only “buyer” they found was the American taxpayer. But despite this failing, Evercore, after its healthy fee of $46 million, was able to secure an additional $17.9 million for a “success fee.”
The CEO of Evercore was able to return the favor (to the administration, not the taxpayers) by raising $2.1 million at a gala dinner at his home for the president’s re-election campaign.
And now Schlosstein’s better half gets to be the Ambassador to France. Why not? This is an administration for sale.
President Obama on Friday nominated Jane D. Hartley, the chief executive officer of an economic consulting firm, to be ambassador to France, once more propelling a campaign fund-raiser into a prominent diplomatic position.
The Center for Responsive Politics listed her as a “bundler” who raised more than $519,000 for Mr. Obama’s re-election effort. Her husband, Ralph L. Schlosstein, is a longtime donor to the Democratic Party.
At least her ambassadorship will probably be cheaper than the Wall Street and GM bailouts. And, unlike another Obama and Hillary donor who got to play Euro ambassador, she’s not a pedophile.
It’s a small victory, but with an administration this horrifyingly corrupt, the American people have to set the bar really low.
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine:
http://www.frontpagemag.comURL to article:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-nominates-wife-of-wall-street-donor-linked-to-bailout-controversy-as-ambassador-to-france/
