Money Merry-Go-Round: Emails Show How Wall Street Execs and Alums Crafted Trade Bill

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/06/02/money-merry-go-round-emails-show-how-wall-street-execs-and-alums-crafted-trade-bill

The emails also are bound to reinforce the suspicion that US trade policy is being set by what might be called an “executariat” of corporate and government leaders who periodically swap positions for their mutual benefit. “They’re written as if they are being sent between colleagues,” says Dennis Kelleher of the watchdog group Better Markets. “That’s because the writers all have been, currently are or will be colleagues at major Wall Street firms.”

Most striking is an exchange between Faryar Shirzad, the co-head of Goldman Sachs’ government affairs office, and US Trade Representative Michael Froman.

The two men have mirror-image resumes: Shirzad worked on economic and international issues in the administration of then-President George W. Bush, serving as a top aide to the president (known as a “sherpa”) at several international economic summits.

Froman worked for some of the same agencies as Shirzad, but in the administration of former President Bill Clinton. He sat out the Bush years in the private sector as a managing director of Citigroup, then swirled back through the revolving door into Barack Obama’s administration. At several international economic summits, Froman also served as the president’s sherpa. He became US trade representative in 2013 — but not before his financial holdings raised some eyebrows on Capitol Hill.

Others on Froman’s email chain included: Matt Niemeyer, another Goldman Sachs vice president and Bush administration alum, and Tom Nides, who in 2013 returned to a high-ranking post at Morgan Stanley after taking a three-year hiatus to serve as one of Hillary Clinton’s deputies at the State Department.

The ISDS issues came up in an email from Shirzad and in another from Froman to an unidentified employee at JPMorgan Chase (names of recipients were redacted). “This is really not helpful” before appending a Politico story, clearly pegged to leaks, that described a split in the administration over ISDS, with several agencies, including the Treasury Department, opposing the provision and the trade representative’s office siding with the big banks in favor of it.