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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJeb Bush Got $1.3M Job At Lehman After Florida Shifted Pension Cash To Bank
International Business Times, August 19, 2015Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks during an Americans for Prosperity event in New Hampshire, on July 22, 2015. Reuters/Dominick Reuter (via IB Times)
But for Jeb Bush personally, his enduring relationship with Lehman would prove lucrative. In 2007, just as he left office, Bush secured a job as a Lehman consultant for $1.3 million a year, Bloomberg reported.
Weeks after Bush took the Lehman job, the Florida State Board of Administration (SBA) -- a three-member body that makes investment decisions about state pension funds and whose ranks had recently included one Jeb Bush -- gave Lehman additional business: SBA purchased $842 million worth of separate investments in Lehmans mortgage-backed securities. Over the course of the year, the SBA would shift an additional $420 million of pension money into the same fund in which the state had begun investing under Bush.
In short, during Bushs first year working for Lehman, his former colleagues in Tallahassee, the state capital, moved vast sums of Florida pension money into the doomed Wall Street investment bank, even as warnings about its financial troubles began to emerge.
These days, Jeb Bush is seeking the Republican nomination for president, and in so doing, he presents himself as a champion of the public interest in the face of a corrupted system exploited by insiders who enrich themselves at taxpayer expense. But an International Business Times investigation of Bushs role in helping steer state investment to Lehman and his subsequent employment with the firm challenges that depiction, raising the prospect that Bush may have personally profited from choices his administration made that benefited the bank.
Former government officials and ethics experts interviewed by IBTimes say the sequence of transactions raises significant questions.
There is much more information in this article.
Hello, M$M?
How's about chasing down Jeb Bush for some public answers to this? He's on the run from so many of his dealings while he occupied the Florida governor's office. "Take the money and run" is Jeb Bush's motto.
He stole from the people of Florida.
Come on, M$M. You can do it.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)By Andrew Perez, David Sirota, Matthew Cunningham-Cook
International Business Times, April 14 2015 10:40 AM EDT
Four years before the financial collapse, Goldman Sachs executive George Herbert Walker IV had much to be thankful for. "I've been fortunate to be a small part of teams leading U.S. restructurings, European privatizations, global pension management and now hedge fund and private equity investing, he said in the annual report of a banking colossus that would soon be known as the great vampire squid of Wall Street.
The world, said Walker, just keeps getting more interesting."
As the head of Goldman Sachs alternative investment unit, Walkers ebullience was understandable. At the same time he was raising $100,000 for his cousin George W. Bushs successful presidential re-election effort, the administration of another cousin, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, returned the family favor, delivering $150 million of Florida pension money to an alternative investment fund run by Walkers firm. Like other executives whose companies received Florida pension money, Walker is now renewing the cycle, reportedly attending in February a high-dollar fundraiser for Jeb Bushs political committee.
Walker is not alone: He is one of 19 top fundraisers for George W. Bush -- known as Pioneers and Rangers -- whose financial firms received state business from Jeb Bushs administration in Tallahassee. In all, an International Business Times review of government documents shows Jeb Bush oversaw Florida directing at least $1.7 billion of state workers retirement money to the financial firms of his elder brothers major donors.
As Jeb Bush oversaw the State Board of Administration (SBA) that runs Floridas massive public pension system, the state shifted billions of dollars into higher-risk, higher-fee alternative investments, benefiting the same sector of the investment industry he would work in upon leaving office. Many of those state deals delivered returns that fell short of projections. Roughly 20 percent of that systems 53 private investment deals during Bushs governorship went to companies that employed his brothers Pioneers. Those financial firms, in turn, delivered more than $5 million of campaign cash to George W. Bush, the Republican National Committee and Jeb Bushs Republican Party of Florida. (Click here to see the full list of Bush Pioneers whose firms received Florida pension investments from Jeb Bushs administration).
CONTINUED...
http://www.ibtimes.com/jeb-bushs-administration-steered-florida-pension-money-george-w-bushs-fundraisers-1880592
UBS?
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)I have trouble telling which is which
seafan
(9,387 posts)'....a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.'
That is Jeb Bush of the BFEE.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)DirkGently
(12,151 posts)And with a nice side of "screwing the taxpayers" to go along with it.
America, here is your Republican Party. Take it, or ... no, just don't take it.
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)Sunlei
(22,651 posts)We'll never recover from the 'for profit' empire they have built.
Unless we cut off their gravy train of State and Federal funding.
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)Everything was legal.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Buy partisanship in action: Since the repeal of Glass-Steagal, Phil Gramm and Bill Clinton have specialized in Wealth Management at UBS:
http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)I see what you did there.
Carry on.
Orrex
(63,336 posts)Oh, wait a minute...
maindawg
(1,151 posts)was a Leman Bros associate who fleeced Ohio pension funds.
These Bushes have zero conscience. They dont steal a few grand or make their money in small amounts at all. They take billions. Real wealth from real people. Then they come back for more. They are crime syndicate with many dedicated soldiers. They are hiding W while shamelessly parading idiot no.2 around as if he is some kind of statesman politician of which he is neither. He is a schemer. He has been taught by his father to scheme. He is very wealthy now. And hes carried the water all he cares to. But the crime syndicate must have him. He is their man. He will paired with his own Dick Cheney type. A thoroughly ruthless evil person. Most likely a woman. Susan Martinez. From New Mexico.
True Blue American
(18,006 posts)Said," The year he spent at Lehman Brothers was the best time of his life."
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)lark
(23,258 posts)Lying, stealing and manipulating others for their own personal gain is also always very ascendant with these folks.
lark
(23,258 posts)The editors would never allow it to be printed because it might offend some of their other rich clients who made money by cheating the 99%. Can't risk offending Wall St. and the banks, now can they?
red dog 1
(27,997 posts)MSM won't cover this unless and until "We the People" demand it.
WE need to post comments about this on any MSM website that allows comments.
WE need to send e-mails to MSM news outlets telling them about the Jeb Bush//Lehman Bros. connection.
WE need to get up off our asses and actively work to get MSM off THEIR asses and begin to cover this important story.
I will be contacting as many MSM websites as I can, starting with so-called "liberal" MSM sites such as HufffPo, MSNBC, The Nation Magazine, Rolling Stone Magazine etc.
In addition, I will be posting blogs about this story at any "progressive" websites that allow blogs (Thom Hartmann is one site that does allow blogs to be posted)
And finally, Kudos to International Business Times for having the courage to cover this story.
ericson00
(2,707 posts)all the more why I'll b watching their next debate.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)0rganism
(24,029 posts)the only reason the MSM would have anything to do with this story is if Jeb had a lead in the polls and they wanted a tighter horse race.
that is not the current situation.
but the Donald? he might just do something with it in the debates.
seafan
(9,387 posts)Jeb Bush's involvement with Lehman Brothers is low hanging fruit for some truth reporting by media.
Instead, it's a virtual blackout.
The Bush family is so wired that Jeb Bush would be incredibly valuable to Lehman even without him having thrown some business their direction, said Connaughton, the former chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Ted Kaufman, a Democrat who served on the panel that investigated financial fraud after the bank crisis of 2008. The fact that he did shows once again that there is utterly zero deterrence preventing public officials from being on the receiving end of pay to play when they leave office. Its par for the course -- it has the appearance that Bush was using his public office for personal gain.
The next year, Lehman offered the outgoing Florida governor the consulting job. Bush had worked briefly at a Texas-based bank after college, but he lacked significant Wall Street experience.
Most of the investment losses that hit Florida starting in July 2007 were tied to the Lehman mortgage-backed securities bought the year Bush began his employment at the firm.
As Florida cemented its relationship with Lehman, troubling signs about the banks stability were intensifying.
In a 2011 study, Canadian business school professors Danielle Marin and Julien Le Maux found that Lehmans publicly available financial statements -- easily accessible to Bush and the investment staff -- contained clear warnings about Lehmans precarious condition during Floridas initial and subsequent investments in Lehman.
The signs of financial distress were detectable beginning in 2005, their report concluded. The signs included a chronic inability to generate cash from operating activities, taking on too much risk in untested financial products like derivatives, issuing bonds for itself to mask its operating deficits, and a steady deterioration of the cash situation over three consecutive years.
But that didn't stop Jeb Bush from steering Florida's pension funds Lehman's way. His payoff came just after he left office in 2007, in the form of a $1.3M Job At Lehman.
This family is running a decades-long con on the American people.