The New Major Power Economic Policy Player That is Gaining on Goldman Sachs

While most eyes continue to focus on Goldman Sachs as the major financial and economic power player in Washington DC, another organization is gaining power positions.

For sure, Goldman Sachs operators surround the Trump administration including the former Goldmantites Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and National Economic Adviser Gary Cohn, however, do not ignore the increasing influence ofT
he Carlyle Group.

David Rubenstein,  a Co-Founder and Co-CEO of The Carlyle Group, is the new chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations. He succeeds Robert Rubin in the position. Rubin was Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton administration and the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Randall Quarles was recently confirmed as a Federal Reserve Board member and vice chair for bank supervision. He was a long-time partner of The Carlyle Group, where he began the firm's program of investments in the banking sector during the financial crisis.

Also of note, Quarles's wife, Hope, is related to Marriner Stoddard Eccles -- her grandfather was Marriner's brother. Mariner was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

And now President Trump has nominated Jerome "Jay" Powell to head the Federal Reserve.

From 1997 to 2005, Powell was a partner at The Carlyle Group.

I have never met Powell, but I have run into Rubinstein and Quarles in Washington D.C. They are sharp guys. They will no doubt protect the establishment but they aren't drama queens the way, say, the Goldmanite former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is.

And they are much brighter than Mnuchin and Cohn.

-RW