Obama's Cabinet Was Built By A Wall Street Banker

By Seth Connell
Published October 14, 2016 at 10:38am

Well, well, well, what do we have here?

It seems that the President who claimed he was all for Main Street, and was willing to take on Wall Street was telling bold-faced lies the whole time.

It turns out that Barack Obama’s Presidential Cabinet positions were filled not by an everyday layman, not at the advice of someone who can relate to the average middle-class American, but by a Wall Street Executive of Citibank. And the best part about it is that he made these recommendations while holding an executive position!

Zero Hedge reported:

Perhaps the most startling discovery of the WikiLeaks dumps so far didn’t come from the most recent emails surrounding the various Hillary scandals, though there are many great ones, but from 2008 when John Podesta served as co-chair of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. The email came from Michael Froman, a former Citibank executive, who single-handedly built the entire cabinet of what was supposed to be the “main street” President.

The email in question was even sent from Froman’s Citibank email address (rookie!) and includes “A list of African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, broken down by Cabinet/Deputy and Under/Assistant/Deputy Assistant level, plus a list of Native American, Arab/Muslim American and Disabled American candidates.”

Apparently Obama wasn’t as worried about placing women in senior-level positions but Froman decided to offer up some suggestions anyway.

Nearly all of Forman’s recommendations ended up getting appointments in the Obama Cabinet.

The New Republic analyzed the appointments:

The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.

This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month before votes were counted. And according to the Froman/Podesta emails, lists were floating around even before that.

Many already suspected that Froman, a longtime Obama consigliere, did the key economic policy hiring while part of the transition team. We didn’t know he had so much influence that he could lock in key staff that early, without fanfare, while everyone was busy trying to get Obama elected. The WikiLeaks emails show even earlier planning; by September the transition was getting pre-clearance to assist nominees with financial disclosure forms.

For the Obama administration, diversity was more important than upholding Constitutional obligations and the oath of office. That was their goal right from the start, even before the election: have a diverse Cabinet, history of oath keeping be damned.

So what could be coming our way with Hillary Clinton? Well, expect to see more of Elizabeth Warren, a major enemy of freedom and keeping your own money.

Warren was meeting with Hillary nearly two full years ago regarding this election. This shows just how forward-thinking (personally, that is) the Clinton camp and their ilk are. In January 2015, Warren was in contact with Hillary’s Chief of Staff Dan Geldon working on the details of “personnel issues.”

He was intently focused on personnel issues, laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers, was very critical of the Obama administration’s choices, and explained at length the opposition to Antonio Weiss. We then carefully went through a list of people they do like, which EW sent over to HRC earlier.

We spent less time on specific policies, because he seemed less interested in that.

He spoke repeatedly about the need to have in place people with ambition and urgency who recognize how much the middle class is hurting and are willing to challenge the financial industry.

Are you outraged yet, Democrats? Are you outraged that the party that claims to be free from the influence of Wall Street bankers and CEOs, cronies and corrupt executives, is the party that is quite literally in bed with them?

Are you ready to wake up and smell the cronyism?

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Seth Connell

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