When Elizabeth Warren
started drawing connections between Citigroup alums and the government in startling detail last week, she was right,
says the Washington Post.
Washington's version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is much less exciting than everybody else's. It's called One Degree of Citigroup, and it's not much of a game since so many economic policymakers has worked at the banking behemoth.
Nearly every government economic guru you know by name is likely separated by one degree from Citigroup: Tim Geithner, Peter Orszag, Jack Lew, Robert Rubin, etc.
In many ways, however, this isn't One Degree of Citigroup. It's One Degree of Robert Rubin. After his stint as President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary, Rubin decamped for the newly created Citigroup, which formed after Congress passed a law ending the Depression-era prohibition on banks and securities firms from operating under the same roof. And then Rubin's long list of proteges followed. It's been enough to turn Citigroup into a kind of government-in-exile for Democratic policymakers.
In Warren's speech last Friday, she conceded that she agreed with Citigroup bankers that Wall Street reform wasn't perfect.
"Dodd-Frank isn't perfect," she charged, "it should have broken you into pieces."
Is it any wonder that the Wall Street reform bill negotiated, in part, by the White House, didn't break Citigroup into pieces?