Schmooze or Lose
“In 1983, Obama, then a recent college graduate who wore a leather jacket and smoked cigarettes, took a job on the periphery of New York’s financial sector: for a year, he worked for Business International, a firm that produced economic trade reports for multinational companies. According to Obama’s mother, he told her that this foray into the corporate world amounted to “working for the enemy,” as David Maraniss recounts in his new biography, “Barack Obama: The Story.” By the time that Obama ran for President, in 2008, his relations with the financial industry had grown warmer, and he attracted more donations from Wall Street leaders than John McCain, his Republican opponent, did. Yet this good feeling did not last, despite the government’s bailout of the banking sector. Many financial titans felt that the President’s attitude toward the “one per cent” was insufficiently admiring, even hostile.
