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Multi-Millionaires Populate Obama’s Economic Team; None Need Worry About Losing Their Job
By Richard A. McCormack
richard@manufacturingnews.com
It is not easy taking a job with the Obama administration.
By executive decree issued by President Obama, all political appointees must expose their innermost life to the public -- that being their financial position --upon their acceptance to a position in the administration. The White House says the requirement is the “first ever...release of personal financial disclosure forms.” And they are revealing.
If you thought you knew somebody, likely you don’t, until you know how much money they make, how much and where their money is invested and the annual income generated from their assets.
Manufacturing & Technology News requested the public financial disclosure reports for nine White House economic appointees. After a month of phone calls, additional e-mail and fax requests, we received five “SF-278 Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Reports” that were approved for release by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
When these disclosure forms were first announced, the news media jumped on Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s top economic advisor and former president of Harvard University. With about $9 million in income last year, much of it from Wall Street firms that were bailed out by the federal government, Summers has little in common with Main Street or America’s working-class.
Summers’ top assistant is Jason Furman, deputy director of the White House Economic Council. He had a job last year at the Brookings Institution that provided him with a salary that was a fraction of his total yearly income. Furman lists two assets worth between $5 million and $25 million, each producing between $100,001 and $1 million a year in annual income.
One of those assets, called MF Est. LLC, is described as “a limited liability company involved in the development, ownership and management of shopping centers in approximately 20 states and Puerto Rico, hotels in New York, Georgia and Florida; office buildings in Massachusetts and Washington; industrial facilities in New York and New Jersey; residential condominiums in New York; and senior citizen health care in Massachusetts.” Furman has a financial interest in dozens of high-tech companies.
Ronald Kirk, the new United States Trade Representative, indicates in his disclosure report that his income last year was about $1 million. He reported that, as a lawyer, he was paid to represent “Wall Mart” [sic], and the investment firms of Merrill Lynch, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Fisher & Co., and Dallas-based Pharos Capital Group LLC. He listed these under Part II of schedule D in the SF-278 form, in which he was required to report “compensation in excess of $5,000 paid by one source….for services provided directly by you during any one year of the reporting period. This includes the names of clients and customers of any corporation, firm, partnership or other business enterprise or any other nonprofit organization when you directly provided the services generating a fee or payment of more than $5,000.”
Another appointee, Jared Bernstein who is economic counsel to vice president Joseph Biden, disclosed the date and time of every one of the appearances he made for the year on CNBC. He made $500 each time he was on air, enough for him to earn $70,000 from the cable network owned by General Electric Corp.
By comparison, there was one person of modest means in the group: Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
Click here to view the financial dislcosure form for Lawrence Summers.
Click here to view the financial dislcosure form for Ronald Kirk.
Click here to view the financial dislcosure form for Jason Furman.
Click here to view the financial dislcosure form for Melinda Barnes.
Click here to view the financial dislcosure form for Jared Bernstein.
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