Experience on Wall Street? Don’t run for office.
Bob Rubin and Hank Paulson. Vernon Jordan practically lives in the intersection of finance and politics. Heck, even John Edwards took a sabbatical at private equity/hedge fund firm Fortress Investment Group (FIG) between campaigns. Although Edwards’ explanation — that he wanted to understand more about how Wall Street worked so as to be better able to help the poor — was laughable. We’d ask Kasich why he was motivated to work at Lehman, but we can’t get the man on the horn.
Under pressure from local media, Kasich recently released his 2008 tax return that showed he earned nearly $600,000 from Lehman that year. That’s not much, relatively speaking, but that was also a very bad year for Lehman. It would be interesting to know what he was paid in 2004 or 2005, something Mr. Kasich’s campaign refuses to reveal. And even when he’s spoken about Lehman, he’s been brief. "Here’s the truth," he said in a campaign advertisement. "I didn’t run Lehman Brothers. I was one of 700 managing directors. I worked in a two-man office in Columbus."
Truth be told, we’re not sure where we’re supposed to go with that. Is he trying to say that the folks at Lehman had no interest in John Kasich being in charge of anything but a two-man operation? (If he was even in charge of that.) What kind of message does that send to the voters of Ohio?
Filed under: news by Guru