Saturday, January 21, 2012

Income inequality by the numbers


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Via Rich Lowry:



1.1 : the millions of dollars new White House Chief of Staff, Jacob Lew, made from Citigroup in one year, recently.


8.7 : the millions of dollars former Chief of Staff, William Daley, made in roughly one-year of work for JPMorgan Chase.


5.1 : the millions of dollars former administration economic advisor, Larry Summers made for managing a hedge fund.


16.1 : the millions of dollars Rahm Emanuel made from working for an investment firm.


2-3 : the millions of dollars former budget director Peter Orszag will pull down from Citigroup.


7 : the millions of dollars current national security advisor, Tom Donilon, made for his work at Fannie Mae back in 2000-2003.


Perhaps this class warfare exercised of late by the President is rather of the self-loathing variety.


However, good to know some people are prospering in this sluggish economy. Maybe it really is, who you know.




Lowry's exit question:

Is it too much to ask that one high-profile Obama official leave government and refuse to make more than $70,000 a year out of solidarity with the middle class and commitment to income equality? Of course it is. Just as the definition of a recession is when someone else loses a job, greed is when someone else makes a lot of money. For anyone hoping to get to the top, the collective message of current and former Obama officials should be clear: Do as they do, not as they say.



* Stephanie Cutter: adviser to the Obama reelection campaign who wrote a critique the other day regarding Mitt Romney’s days at Bain Capital, subtitled “Profit at Any Cost" and who herself served as a spokeswoman for J.C. Flowers... a private equity firm.

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