Wednesday, June 9, 2010

White House Toasts PEU Pass with Carlyle Group's Rubenstein?


Politico reported:

Last month, Elizabeth Vale, a White House liaison to the business community, e-mailed dozens of business leaders, inviting them to join senior White House economic officials Diana Farrell and Austan Goolsbee to discuss the Wall Street reform bill passed by the Senate the day before.
“We are pleased to invite you today to join senior White House officials for a conference call to discuss the historic financial Wall Street reform legislation passed in the Senate yesterday,” the invitation read, adding that the call was off-limits to the media.
The invitation was sent to some of the top financial services and business lobbyists in Washington, including Michael Paese of Goldman Sachs, Scott Talbott of the Financial Services Roundtable and Bruce Josten of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Also on the e-mail list were Business Roundtable President John Castellani, Chamber President Tom Donohue and billionaire David Rubenstein, co-founder of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group.
Did Elizabeth Vale or Austan Goolsbee toast the virtual free pass given to private equity underwriters (PEU's) and sovereign wealth funds? The media wouldn't know. The open and transparent Obama administration shut out the Fourth Estate.

But don't worry, "an industry source familiar with the call said it was a fairly standard legislative update/pep rally." If so, who groped who? Did anybody rifle through taxpayer's drawers?

Update 7-27-14:  NYT noticed private equity's free pass