The morning’s New York Times confirms that Treasury Secretary Geithner has picked Mark Patterson as his chief of staff, paradoxically within a story about Geithner’s announcement of new “rules to ‘combat lobbyist influence’ over the bailout program. . . .”
Who is Mark Patterson? He has a Democratic pedigree, having served as staff of Senator Moynihan and Senator Dasschle. But most recently, from 2003 until April of 2008, he served as a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, serving as the “co-head of U.S. government relations” for at least part of that time.
So is making a high-profile announcement about “combating lobbyist influence” just one of those “head fakes,” to throw the activists off, or do we really need someone who was right in the belly of the beast to understand how to tame the beast?
I’ll reserve judgment on this new Treasury Secretary and his team until their fruits start becoming obvious, but I have to say that it doesn’t look good to me so far.
What did Mr. Patterson work on as a Goldman Sachs lobbyist?
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