Sunday, March 19, 2017

Goldman Sachs Players on the Rise Inside Trump's Inner Circle

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Trump's economic adviser Gary Cohn
The New York Times reports;
 [A] new realignment has emerged in a West Wing already rived by suspicion and intrigue.

Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who serves as the president’s top economic policy adviser and who is decidedly more liberal than the rest of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, is on the rise, and has the ear of the president’s powerful son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Kushner also gained an ally on the National Security Council with the appointment of Dina Powell, a Republican and another former Goldman official who worked with Mr. Cohn, as a deputy for strategy.
Though Cohn has a very powerful position in the White House, and will have a major role in making sure crony deals are always on the table, one should not ignore Powell.

According to Politico, Powell, the former Goldman Sachs partner who was President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, was Ivanka’s “top adviser on policy and staffing."

Since then she was asked by national security adviser H. R. McMaster to serve as deputy national security adviser for strategy.

The neocons love her:

Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblatt emails The Jewish Insider:
Dina is a consummate professional whose intelligence and foresight I came to appreciate when she was an executive at Goldman Sachs leading their work on impact investing. I am certain that the Administration will benefit from her sharp mind and political smarts.
 Warhawk Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted:
And Condoleezza Rice likes Powell's creativity in putting together crony public-private "partnerships".

When Powell left the State Department for Goldman Sachs, Rice told the Washington Post.  “I’m really sorry to lose her. She is fantastic,” Rice said in an interview. “She had so many ideas. There are people who have ideas but can’t execute them. She really executed them.” Rice pointed especially to Powell’s creation of public-private partnerships, which brought corporations together with the government to assist other countries,..."

Dina Powell
Reports the Daily Mail:
Cohn has been making inroads with his pro-trade agenda in favor of globalization, overpowering Bannon loyalist Peter Navarro in a meeting earlier this month, according to the Financial Times.
And Powell has been gaining prominence, after Trump this week named her deputy national security adviser for strategy in addition to her prior post as senior counselor for economic initiatives.
On Friday, Powell sat only two seats from Trump at a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with only Vice President Mike Pence between Powell and the President.

Powell, Pence and Trump during meeting with Merkel.

Powell (née Habib) was born in Egypt and moved with her parents to the United States when she was four.

Under George W. Bush, she served as the Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel, a senior staff position at the White House. Powell was later designated by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the office of Deputy Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

Powell is on the board of the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative, the American University in Cairo and the Center for Global Development. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Trilateral Commission.

She is expected to continue to advise Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.

 -RW 

1 comment:

  1. To expand upon what Bob has mentioned here, it's worth taking Thomas DiLorenzo's Mises Academy online class, "American Bankster: Money, Banking, and the Power Elite in U.S. History."

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