The New Republic has a snappy slide show, “Obama Officials Cash Out,” a rogue’s gallery that leads with Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, now hanging with Citigroup, decidedly not my favorite bank. Orszag probably won’t spend all his time doling out million-dollar bribes to high-end Manhattan pre-schools in order to allow Citigroup to rip off investors—and quite likely, taxpayers—for the umpteenth time in the sordid history of Sandy Weil’s monument to himself, but the odds are, he won’t be keeping his hands entirely clean, either.
So Pete’s tale, yeah, it’s sordid and lame, and totally confirms one’s suspicions—those that hadn’t yet hardened into adamantine conviction, that is—that the deepest purpose of the Obama Administration’s economic policy has always been to convince Wall Street that nothing, absolutely nothing has changed. Party like it’s 1999, guys! Or even 1929!
Yeah, baby! But Orszag’s belly flop of shame wasn’t enough for the gang at TNR. They’ve got more sordid. Larry Summers, for example, he went back to his old job at Harvard! Talk about corruption, huh? Harvard’s loss, that’s all I can say. And Steven Rattner? He wrote a book! And how about General McChrystal? He got, well, he got fired, and now he has taken up a position teaching at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. What a rip-off, eh?*
*Of course, in a better world, one with, you know, justice, McChrystal might in jail, given his more than sordid record in Iraq as commander of Task Force 6-26, an elite torture unit whose abysmal record will remain a permanent stain on the honor of the nation McChrystal pretended to serve. McChrystal also approved the award of the Silver Star to Rusty Tillman, knowing that the “facts” given in the commendation were entirely false. One hopes the folks at Yale are proud of their new plum.
