- David Malpass has been pitching himself as a political outsider who can shake up Washington, but that couldn’t be further from the truth
- Malpass, a former chief economist for Bear Stearns, is heavily connected to the big money political cogs in New York—making him little more than another crony Gillibrand, only he’s running in the Republican primary.
- Malpass is a cheerleader for his main supporters including the powerful Citigroup director Diana Taylor (longtime girlfriend of Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the richest man in New York). Taylor has been a principal money raiser for the Malpass campaign. In fact, Malpass is well loved by many billionaires, he’s also got failed presidential candidate Steve Forbes on board. Does this sound like a man of the people?
- Don’t expect Malpass to represent New Yorkers: When a $26.1 billion state aid package was passed in the Senate recently, Malpass mischaracterized it as not being offset by other provisions, which it actually was ($6.7 billion in cuts to food stamps and $9.6 billion in foreign tax loopholes). But who else didn’t want the bill? Mayor Bloomberg. Surprised?
- Taylor, the former NY state banking superintendent who now sits on 13 powerful boards including as a director at disgraced Citigroup, is socially liberal and has also recently supported a Democratic Congressional candidate. She has said she would’ve run for Gillibrand’s Senate seat herself if her significant other wasn’t named Mayor Bloomberg. But in New York your true political convictions don’t really matter, as long as you can see green.
- As New York Daily News put it (7/24/09), the appointment of Taylor, also a former board member at Fannie Mae, to her new role at Citigroup “catapults Bloomberg and Taylor further into the power-couple stratosphere, with links that extend beyond politics (City Hall) and the media (Bloomberg LP) to the highest levels of global finance.”
- Is it any wonder why David Malpass received the early endorsement of the New York Post, a business owned by Rupert Murdoch, another of the titans of industry who would benefit from a Wall Street crony in the Senate? It probably didn’t hurt that Malpass’ wife, Adele, used to work at the Post as a reporter as well. And ’round and ’round we go.
- Of course, nepotism is nothing new at Citigroup: the bank had a current employee and the son of an employee working for Obama and developing the government bailout of Citigroup with taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees.
- So what kind of favors can we expect in return from Malpass if he wins the U.S. Senate seat? And will there really be change coming to Washington? Just remember what the government did for Citigroup with all of our tax dollars:
- As noted by reporter Dean Baker of the Washington Post: “The Fed created various special lending facilities that allowed Citigroup to borrow money from the government at extremely low interest rates. Since one of the main uses of this money was buying government bonds, Citigroup was essentially getting free money from the government. If it borrowed $200 billion at near zero interest and lent it back to the government by buying 10-year Treasury bonds at 3.7 percent interest, then the government was effectively handing Citigroup $7.4 billion a year for nothing. This money is not deducted from the Post’s estimate of the government’s “profit” on its dealings with Citigroup…”
- Speaking at a fundraising dinner for Malpass, Taylor said: “The thing that struck me about David was, I was hearing from him all the things I would want to do in the Senate.”
