Hillary Clinton spoke at two Goldman Sachs events over the past few days, the National Review's Alec Torres reports.

Clinton takes home about $200,000 per speech, which apparently is around the going rate for the "formers" of President Obama's cabinet.

Gramm to work for Swiss bank

UBS Warburg took over much of Enron operation

By KAREN MASTERSON
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Phil Gramm, one of the banking industry's closest allies on Capitol Hill, has accepted a job with Switzerland's largest bank.

The Texas Republican announced Monday that when he retires from the Senate later this year he'll become vice chairman of UBS Warburg, the investment banking arm of UBS AG that acquired a major piece of Enron earlier this year after the Houston-based energy giant fell apart.

Gramm will cap 24 years in Congress with a plum job in an industry that has been among his largest campaign contributors.

Without revealing his salary -- other than to say it'll be more than the $150,000 he made this year as a senator -- Gramm said the job will require him to split his time between midtown Manhattan, Washington and various places around the world.

"I am as excited about becoming an investment banker as I was the day I got my Ph.D. or the day that I was first elected to Congress," he said Monday. Before winning a House seat in 1978, Gramm taught economics at Texas A&M University.

The 60-year-old fiscal conservative told reporters that going to work for the banking industry posed no impropriety because the policies he pushed as the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee were meant to improve the financial markets, not benefit any one corporation.

"It will provide me the opportunity to practice what I have always preached," said Gramm, who opposes the imposition of federal regulations on free market forces.

UBS spokeswoman Christine Walton said it's unclear whether Gramm will lobby for the corporation next year, once the one-year federal lobbying ban expires.

"The whole reason for his coming to UBS is not because of who he knows, but what he knows," Walton said.

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