The Trib still treads softly on Emanuel's amazing success as an investment banker....he raked in $18 million in just 2 1/2 years upon leaving the Clinton WH. The guy who hired him is a fat cat Dem donor with an investment bank in Chicago. In essence, Emanuel "leveraged" his political influence to get public pension funds to direct money to this guy's fund.
The NY Times covered all this in Dec. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/us/politics/04emanuel.html
But their short memories never recalled any of this as they were pounding away at the "unjustified riches" going to today's executives.
He should be forced to give it back.
Or the legislators should pass a retroactive tax taking 90% of it.
And let’s hope ACORN buses in lots of protesters to his front door.
(no link)
NewsBank
Emanuel ‘s cash clash - Emanuel ‘s trust is supposed to be blind, not stupid.
Chicago Sun-Times - Thursday, August 14, 2003
Author: Lynn Sweet
Freshman Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a former Freddie Mac board member, sits on the very House subcommittee that has oversight of the federal government-sponsored enterprise at the same time that he has outstanding options for 2,500 shares of the company.
Emanuel told me he has no problem because he put his holdings into a blind trust and plans to recuse himself from any votes relating to Freddie Mac . “I chose to do something you don’t have to do,” he said, as if he deserved extra points. “I feel good about the actions I’ve taken to date,” he added.
Emanuel had no business getting on the Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises subcommittee as long as he had the Freddie Mac options—in blind trust or not.
It would have been better if Emanuel sold the Freddie Mac shares he already owned before being sworn in last January and told Freddie Mac to forget about any future options to which he may be entitled. It’s not like Emanuel did much to earn those options, and he already has received more than $300,000 from Freddie Mac just for attending a few meetings.
Emanuel ‘s former boss, President Bill Clinton, appointed his former senior adviser to the plum seat, and Emanuel served from March 2, 2000, to May 3, 2001. The main job of a board member, Emanuel told me, is to attend quarterly board meetings and take part in committee meetings, either on the phone or in person.
For a mere 14 months on the board, Emanuel was paid director’s fees and given stock as a gift. The package totaled $292,774 in 2001, according to the disclosure statement Emanuel filed in 2002.
That’s not all. A Freddie Mac appointment is the gift that keeps on giving.
The disclosure Emanuel filed on May 15 reveals that Emanuel exercised a Freddie Mac stock option in 2002 that resulted in $27,280 in income.
Emanuel ‘s office confirmed that the options for 2,500 more shares will come up this fall and next spring. That means that the administrator of Emanuel ‘s blind trust over at LaSalle Bank will have the option of buying the 2,500 shares at the “strike price” of $40.09, no matter how high the stock is selling. I can’t imagine why any administrator of a blind trust would buy shares if the Freddie Mac stock was selling for less than $40.09 or if the company, created with a congressional charter, faced a dubious future. Emanuel ‘s trust is supposed to be blind, not stupid. On Wednesday, Freddie Mac shares closed at $50.20.
The Freddie Mac pop is on top of $9,678,775 in deferred income from what was Emanuel ‘s regular job before coming to Congress, as a deal maker in the investment banking firm of Wasserstein Peralla. Emanuel made most of that money in the three years after he left the White House.
(snip)
Should White House Employees Keep Bonuses?
Some animals are more equal than others, eh?
How do these people continue to escape scrutiny? It’s not like it’s HARD to find any of this on the web. Yeesh!
Oh, that’s right. The Media is in the tank for the ‘Rats.
Silly me!
That place was a reward for loyal service in the Clinton administration.
They did nothing except network with other democrats until another more lucrative job came available or they were able to set up yet another “think tank” funded by Soros.
Oh, but I’m sure that Charles Grassley will be making a big stink about this on Capitol Hill sometime soon, really standing up for us Republicans.......
I am so sick of our leadership. I seriously cannot think of a single Republican in Congress that is worth a sh!t to any of us. Sellouts, wusses, infiltrators, weasels. That’s it. Emmanuel did this because Emmanuel knew he would get away with it. So did Jamie Gorelick, so did Franklin Raines, so did Jim Johnson, so did Christopher Dodd, so did Barnie Frank, so did all of them. And no one on our side has the guts to do anything about it. Until one of us does.
If there is any doubt about the true purpose of the stimulus bill, let it go. It's all about redistributing wealth not to the disadvantaged poor, but to the cohorts, co-conspirators, inlaws, cousins, wives, girlfriends, blackmailers, college buddies, and every crooked associate of the Obamas, Clintons, Daschles, Rangels, Conyers, Murthas, Dodds, Pelosis, Reids..(this is gonna be a long list).
Sounds like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nothing more than entities providing cushy non-jobs and exorbitant pay (pay-offs?) to political appointees, but Emmanuel's $324K pales in comparison to the over $20 million bonus that Jamie Gorelick pulled down.
Actually, my favorite Rahm Emanuel scam (of many) is the magnificent property tax-free mansion he lives in owned by the Rahm Emanuel Foundation.
You or I would be doing the perp walk in handcuffs if we ever tried this.
Move along. Nothing to see here. Relax - he’s a liberal democrat so it’s OK.
All that money...and he still had to wake up to this every morning (rent free, mind you)