http://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman...-for-top-white-house-economic-post-1481304063Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn Is Leading Candidate for Top White House Economic Post
Cohn would be third Goldman alumnus to join Trump administration
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Gary Cohn is the leading candidate to serve as director of the White House National Economic Council, two Trump transition advisers said Friday, putting alums of the prominent Wall Street investment bank into the top two economic jobs of the new administration.
The move, which wouldn't require Senate confirmation, would further solidify a marked tilt toward wealthy bankers and business people—as well as former top military brass—among the top ranks of President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers and cabinet members.
The Trump administration’s economic and financial team began to take shape with last week’s announcement that former Goldman executive Steven Mnuchin was the president-elect’s choice to become Treasury secretary. Now Messrs. Trump and Mnuchin, along with transition officials, are looking to round out the economic and regulatory team.
The NEC job could serve as a steppingstone to other top government posts, including at the Treasury or Federal Reserve, a leap that has some precedent in past administrations.
Nominating a Goldman executive—Mr. Cohn also serves as chief operating officer—could open Mr. Trump to criticism, especially after his campaign had prominently attacked big multinational banks. A campaign video in the final weeks before the election attacked global elites and flashed an image of Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein. Mr. Trump already has tapped two other Goldman alumni, including Mr. Mnuchin and top White House adviser Steve Bannon.
Mr. Cohn joined Goldman in 1990 as a silver salesman and became a partner in 1994, the same year as Mr. Mnuchin.
Mr. Cohn declined to comment through a spokesman.
His appointment would cap a remarkable rise for someone who was so severely dyslexic as a child that a teacher once told his parents he might aspire to drive a truck, and whose first job out of college was selling window panels and aluminum siding. His lack of polish on Goldman’s trading floor raised early questions about his fitness to run the bank. But he has softened his rougher edges in the past year, which also saw him thrust into the spotlight as Mr. Blankfein battled lymphoma.
Mr. Cohn was raised in a blue-collar household in Ohio, and after a short stint at U.S. Steel in Cleveland, he became an options dealer at the New York Mercantile Exchange. He has served as Goldman’s operating chief since 2006, a leadership transition set into motion when the then-CEO of the bank, Henry Paulson, was tapped by President George W. Bush to serve as Treasury secretary.
Mr. Cohn, a registered Democrat, isn’t vocally political, and has given money to candidates of both parties. Mr. Cohn has traveled extensively around the world and has deep contacts in Silicon Valley, on Capitol Hill, and with banking regulators.
Unlike Mr. Blankfein, who publicly endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Mr. Cohn has kept his views close to the chest, except to say on CNBC last month he wasn’t surprised by the outcome of the election.
Mr. Trump’s antiestablishment campaign repeatedly singled out Goldman Sachs as the embodiment of elites who had led the country astray. In the GOP primary, he said Goldman controlled his rival Sen. Ted Cruz, whose wife had worked at the bank. “He will do anything they demand. Not much of a reformer!” he said in a January tweet.
Days before the November general election, his campaign produced a two-minute video alleging a global conspiracy to take wealth from American workers and consolidate it among certain businesses and politicians. The ad, narrated by Mr. Trump, slammed a “global power structure...that puts money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations,” set against video images of Mr. Blankfein delivering a speech.
President Bill Clinton created the National Economic Council in 1993 and it has grown to become the most important economic-policymaking body in the White House. At times, its director has been as influential as the Treasury secretary or other cabinet posts, but the position doesn’t require Senate confirmation.
Mr. Clinton tapped another Goldman executive, then-co-chairman Robert Rubin, as his first NEC director. Mr. Rubin had served at Goldman alongside co-chairman Stephen Friedman, who would later serve Mr. Bush as NEC director from 2002-2005. If tapped by Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohn would become the tenth director of the council and the third to join it from the executive suite at Goldman.
“It does concern me that they would have a lot of swing from one company in major positions in our government,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.) in an interview. “That is not a good sign. It won’t result in good government.”
Joining the government would allow Mr. Cohn to sell his Goldman stock tax-deferred. He owned more than 882,000 shares outright and through trusts and other vehicles, according to a Nov. 15 regulatory filing. That stake is worth more than $212 million at current prices, which are just shy of an all-time high reached in October 2007.
But I guess BC or Ace will tell me how great this is, how Trump is playing some 3 dimensionnal chess I cannot even see...
