FactCheck.org: SuperPAC claim - Obama White House ‘Full of Wall Street Executives’?

[pampango]

A conservative super PAC exaggerates the number of “Wall Street executives” in the Obama White House. In a major TV ad buy, the American Future Fund lists 27 people it claims are part of “Obama’s Wall Street Inner Circle.” But the ad is either flat wrong or greatly exaggerated in more than half of those cases. Among the most laughable examples we found of “Wall Street executives” in Obama’s “inner circle”:

The Geithner Myth and Other Exaggerations

American Future Fund announced Feb. 27 that it would spend nearly $4 million in nine states on a TV ad titled “Obama’s Wall Street.” It opens with a clip of Obama saying, “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”

The ad veers sharply from the truth when it claims Obama’s “White House is full of Wall Street executives.” The viewer is shown photos of seven people to support this claim — but more than half of them are bogus examples. One of them never worked as an investment banker (Geithner); two of them have resumes that fall far short of being “Wall Street executives” (Rahm Emanuel and Louis Caldera); and one was not part of the White House (Jon Corzine).

The most blatantly false example is Geithner, who is pictured along with the words “Goldman Sachs” and “$1.7 million estimate of assets.” Despite a popular myth circulated on the Internet, Geithner never worked for Goldman Sachs. The New York Times wrote an article about how often this rumor has been misstated as fact...

http://factcheck.org/2012/02/obama-white-house-full-of-wall-street-executives/

I haven't seen this ad broadcast locally yet but, since I live in Ohio, I'm sure it will be coming to a TV screen near me any day now.

It is a bit hypocritical that a conservative superPAC would accuse an opponent of being beholden to Wall Street.

[izquierdista]

1. Geithner never worked for Goldman Sachs

In the same way that Kermit the Frog never worked for PBS.

[pampango]

4. True. Kermit never got a paycheck (puppet discrimination) from PBS nor, per wiki, Geithner from GS.

From Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner

Early Career

Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates in Washington for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988. He went on to serve as an attaché at the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (1995–1996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (1996–1997), assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998).

He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Summers was his mentor, but other sources call him a Rubin protégé.

In 2002 he left the Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department. He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department (2001–2003) at the International Monetary Fund.

In October 2003, at age 42, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His salary in 2007 was $398,200. ... In November 2007 he rejected Sanford Weill's offer to take over as Citigroup's chief executive. (His tenure at the FRB of New York lasted until 2009.)

In March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns. In the same year, he played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG just two days after deciding not to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. Some Wall Street CEOs subsequently expressed the opinion that decisions in which Geithner participated, especially the failure to rescue Lehman, contributed to worsening the global financial crisis.

[RockaFowler]

2. It's airing in the following markets:

West Palm Beach
Charlotte
Greensboro
Raleigh


Not sure why these were targeted, but my station is one of them. They are airing until 3/11

[jpgray]

3. Finance is heavily represented in Obama's administration, but this ad is crap