So, you don't know my brother John? He lives in San Francisco, he's as smart as a whippet and when I called this week he had a question – "what do George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have in common?"
"Goldman Sachs," he answered his own question, with an implied baboom!
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Mnuchin 'relatively safe choice' says analyst
President-elect Donald Trump picks ex-Goldman Sachs Steven Mnuchin to lead the US Treasury Department and Wall Street breathes a sigh of relief, says an analyst.
John's right. It seems that no recent aspiring or elected US president dares to broach the White House without their hand being held by someone who has done time at this obscenely rich, multinational corporate behemoth. Still building out his cabinet team, Donald Trump already has recruited three of them and there's speculation more are in the pipeline.
By its sheer size, Goldman Sachs (revenue, $US40 billion; assets, $US860 billion, staff, 35,000) is a part of the Washington swamp, that Wall Street-Congressional axis of self-interest, which Trump repeatedly promised to drain.
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But far from yanking a plug to empty it, Trump is happily doing bombshells in the murk, gathering in playmates whose corporate and political credentials, not to mention their multibillion- and multimillion-dollar fortunes, suggest little empathy with the "forgotten men and women" that Candidate Trump promised to protect from rich guys looking after rich guys and, as they go, demolishing the financial regulations that might have prevented the Great Recession – or which were reinstated in its aftermath, in the hope of preventing a repeat of the 2008 financial collapse from which the US is still recovering.
It was only weeks ago, during the election campaign, that Trump cast Goldman Sachs and its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, as the face of corporate evil.
Not only were they too pally with "crooked" Hillary Clinton, who he claimed was "under their total control", but according to one of Trump's TV ads, Goldman Sachs and its ilk comprised a "global power structure" that was "responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.
"Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people," Trump declared.
In a scathing critique, progressive commentator Paul Waldman writes in The American Prospect: "So in order to take on that global power structure, Trump is hiring a bunch of billionaires and Wall Street tycoons, cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, scaling back regulatory oversight of Wall Street, and offering an infrastructure plan that consists mostly of tax breaks to corporations to encourage them to build projects that they'll then charge the public tolls in order to use."
As the President-elect assembles his cabinet and White House team, old lines of Washington power, financial and political, are so apparent that some who voted for the New York realtor and reality TV star might wonder if this really is how to make America great again.
DC's reliable revolving door spins dizzily. Trusted corners of the corporate world throw up appointees; and old-boy political networks we were assured had been rendered impotent by campaign combat seem to be merging effortlessly into a power matrix that will define Trump's Washington – more than half Trump's nine key appointments to date are considered to be "accomplished Washington insiders".
There was an intake of breath on Wednesday when Trump confirmed that his nominee for Treasury Secretary is one-time Goldman Sachs banker and Hollywood movie investor Steven Mnuchin (worth $US40 million). In some quarters he's known as the "foreclosure king" for the manner in which a bank of which he was a part-owner is said to have foreclosed on an estimated 36,000 homeowners during the 2007 housing crisis.
Steven Mnuchin, the Trump nominee for Treasury Secretary. Photo: AP
"Harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive … inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious," a judge who examined one of the foreclosures said of the bank's practices.
On Twitter, Mnuchin was described as "basically the cartoon-villain personification of everything alt-right rails against" – the alt-right being the school of ethno-nationalist conservative thinking that threw its weight behind the Trump campaign, and for which Trump's White House strategist, Steve Bannon, is cheerleader.
Mnuchin is not the only Goldman Sachs alum in the Trump team.
Bannon also did time at Goldman Sachs. And Gary Cohn ($US175 million), another Goldman Sachs veteran, reportedly is being considered to as Trump's budget chief.
Democrat firebrand and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren was scathing on Mnuchin's proposed appointment – "[It] should send shivers down the spine of every American who got hit hard by the financial crisis, and it's the latest sign that Donald Trump has no intention of draining the swamp and every intention of running Washington to benefit himself and his rich buddies."
America's estimated 500 billionaires might be unlikely candidates for a White House team that working-class Americans were promised would look out for them – at his last campaign rally in Michigan, Trump told supporters: "We're fighting for every citizen that believes that government should serve the people, not then donors and not the special interests."
But already Trump, the first billionaire President-elect, has appointed three more billionaires to a team that, even incomplete, is the richest administration in modern American history – prompting Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank to dub it "Trump's Team of Oligarchs".
In today's dollars, George W. Bush's 2001 entire Cabinet was worth about $US250 million, less than one-tenth of the near $US3 billion worth of distressed assets investor Wilbur Ross, who is Trump's nominee for commerce secretary.
Trump's other billionaire appointees are Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Rickets ($US15 billion) as deputy commerce secretary; and GOP fundraiser-extraordinaire, schools privatisation advocate and wife of $US5 billion Amway heir Dick DeVos, Betsy DeVos, as secretary of education. Harold Hamm ($US17 billion) is shortlisted to be energy secretary.
Betsy DeVos, secretary of education pick for Donald Trump. Photo: Bloomberg
Duke University political scientist Nicholas Carnes told The Washington Post: "The research really says that when you put a bunch of millionaires in charge, you can expect public policy that helps millionaires at the expense of everybody else."
And along with establishment capital, establishment political power also is getting a seat at Trump's top table.
It's hardly surprising that Trump has named Georgia congressman Tom Price, an avowed critic of Obamacare, as his secretary of health and human services; Bush I and II eras transport bigwig Elaine Chao as his secretary of transportation; Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, whose alleged racism cost him a judicial appointment during the Reagan years, as attorney-general; and Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo, who's just dying to take a sledgehammer to the Iran nuclear deal, as director of the CIA.
Senator Jeff Sessions, attorney-general pick for Donald Trump. Photo: Bloomberg
But if we're being told that the GOP now is Trump's creature, how might the balance of power between the White House and the Capitol be calibrated?
Much of Trump's populist promises are heretical in the policy cannons of the Republican Party. But the candidate who wanted to slaughter the Washington and GOP establishment, and House Speaker Paul Ryan in particular, seems to be surrounding himself with heavies from The Hill or their network buddies.
Ryan and GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell ought to be feeling quite smug, because the influence they will wield in the Trump White House is significant. Consider:
Reince Priebus, RNC chairman and Trump's choice as White House chief of staff, goes way back with Ryan – both hail from Wisconsin and are long-term allies. Future health secretary Price is one of Ryan's best congressional friends and allies.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence is running Trump's transition team – Trump picked Pence for the ticket as governor of Indiana, but in a previous life Pence was in Congress, where he worked closely with Ryan and Price, and much of these second-tier cabinet appointments are judged to be the work of Pence and Priebus.
Another likely appointee from the Republican establishment is 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In the course of the campaign Trump pilloried the millionaire former governor of Massachusetts as a knucklehead because as leader of the NeverTrump movement, Romney had loudly and repeatedly denounced Trump as a "fraud" and a "phony".
But in what some observers conclude is a calculated exercise in humiliation as he takes total control of the GOP; Trump is very publicly toying with appointing Romney as secretary of state – and Romney's willingness to subject himself to Trump's power play is read as proof yet again of Romney's capacity to never let seeming deeply held beliefs get in the way of his political ambition.
Chao's resume is loaded with DC intrigue too. Yes, she served in the Bush administrations; and in 2015 alone, she pocketed more than $US1 million in corporate board fees alone, but it's her country of birth and the particulars of her marriage that excite critics and allies alike – some will say that her birth in Taiwan is a gesture to diversity by Trump, who is cast as president for white, working-class America; and that she is married to Mitch McConnell will prompt cries of nepotism from others.
But damned clever politics, don't you think?
The Trump promise for which Republican leaders in Congress have shown virtually no enthusiasm is his plan to invest $1 trillion in upgrading national infrastructure – by appointing Chao to oversee the big spend, Trump seems to be betting on the issue being resolved at the Chao-McConnell breakfast table.
Former Labour Secretary Elaine Chao and her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Photo: AP
The move certainly has not knocked McConnell off his stride. Asked if, as senate leader, he might recuse himself from his wife's confirmation hearing, he didn't miss a beat – "let me be quite clear, I'll not be recusing myself. I think it's an outstanding choice."
On Thursday, Trump decided to nominate retired Marine General James Mattis to be secretary of defense, a relatively conventional appointment – especially when compared with his choice of retired General Michael Flynn as national security adviser. As Trump's key adviser on global security, there's alarm in some quarters that Flynn actually believes that China, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba are in league with militant Islamists in a grand plot to impose their ideology on the world.
Another possible appointee whose name bizarrely remains alive in speculation, is former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, who gets mentions as a possible interior or veterans' affair secretary.
Apart from that and my brother John's joke, there's another doing the rounds – the mere millionaires that Trump has brought into his billionaires' circle will have to apply for food stamps to have lunch with their really, really rich top-table colleagues.