Well, the world seems to be treating it as a huge surprise that Gary Cohn is ditching the White House, even though he’s been dropping broad hints about it for a while now. Sadly, the marvelous plunge we saw instantly when trading opened Tuesday night has been cut about in half. The markets are still down, sure, but not nearly as much as before.
Although, let’s face it, Mr. Cohn is a shrewd man. In exchange for his brief stint in Washington, he was able to:
- Dump his quarter-billion dollars in Goldman Sachs shares tax free (ostensibly to avoid “conflict of interest” – – uh-huh)
- Push through a tax bill to permanently give him and his cronies a greatly-reduced tax liability.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he performed his “public service” career with the intent of making it brief and self-serving. If so, mission accomplished on both fronts.
Or maybe it was out of selfless love for his country, right? Right?
