President-elect Barack Obama is surrounded by folks who have spent time
in and around Wall Street. In addition to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Robert
Rubin and Paul Volcker,
DealBook notes
Robert Wolf, the chief executive of UBS Americas; Timothy C. Collins,
head of buyout firm Ripplewood Holdings; and Mark Gallogly, managing
partner of private equity firm Centerbridge Partners. Meanwhile,
DealZone notes
three of Citigroup Inc.'s 15 directors -- Time Warner Inc. chairman Richard
Parsons, Xerox Corp. CEO Anne Mulcahy and former Treasury Secretary Rubin --
are also members of Obama's transition economic advisory board. With
all this Wall Street firepower,
Bloomberg News asks whether or not the president-elect's administration will really seek change on Wall Street.
Continue reading below
Well, it's clear that Obama has the capacity to make his own
decisions, and not blindly follow the advice of advisers as evidenced
by the very Bloomberg article that questions his free will:
During the height of the financial crisis in late September, some of
Barack Obama's campaign advisers pushed him in a conference call to
distance himself from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The former
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief executive officer, they warned, was too
close to President George W. Bush and Wall Street.
Obama, 47, rejected the idea. At one point, he talked to Paulson every day for two weeks.
Throughout the Bloomberg story, the reporter seems engaged in a
debate with herself over whether Wall Street should expect change. On
the pro change side, she cites history of economic calamities in the
20th century that lead to massive change under the administrations of
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Additionally, the story notes
the pro-regulation rhetoric Obama spoke about on the campaign trail.
On the other hand, she notes that Obama doesn't support the call
among Democrats in Congress for salary caps on bankers' compensation.
Instead, he supports "say on pay," meaning that he would leave
compensation decisions up to shareholders to decide, which in fact
would be a change from current rules.
Eventually the story concludes that change will come to Wall Street,
but not after it offers a digression into Robert Rubin's and Larry
Summers' tenures at Treasury, noting how they opposed government
oversight of derivatives and oversaw the final repeal of Glass
Steagall. This isn't the most sophisticated reading of either Wall
Street past or future. Oddly enough, much of the conjecture on the
types of changes Wall Street should expect come from -- where else? --
Obama's advisers. And it's all conjecture. No one knows what will come
after Jan. 20. After all, who would have guessed in 2001 -- or even
2004 -- that the Bush administration would be buying up stakes in U.S.
banks? - Matthew Wurtzel
See story from Bloomberg
See related story from DealBook
See story from DealZone
Matthew Wurtzel is the editor of Dealscape.
Comments
not sure if they should, but sure looks like they do.