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Mitt Romney is apparently not having the best time in Britain thus far. But things will get significantly better when he attends a big fundraiser tonight populated by many executives from Barclays Bank, the firm at the heart of the Libor scandal. While Bob Diamond, the former CEO, has dropped out of the event, Patrick Durkin, the top lobbyist at Barclays US operation, is a co-host (and also a major bundler for Romney). All the attendees are US citizens who either live in London or who traveled for the event.
In fact, 82 Barclays executives have donated the maximum amount to the Romney campaign, compared to 1 for Barack Obama. Needless to say, attaching Romney to the bad publicity surrounding Barclays, which admittedly rigged the Libor for years, has the potential to rebound badly. This is especially true considering that members of the British Parliament have urged an end to the fundraising:
Barclays has privately distanced itself from its bankers’ donations to Mitt Romney, the US Republican presidential candidate, after its executives were accused in parliament of fundraising for political candidates instead of working to rebuild the public’s trust in the wake of the Libor-setting scandal.
Executives at Barclays have donated over $1m to Romney’s presidential campaign and will hand over more money on Thursday night at an exclusive fundraising dinner in a secret Mayfair location, where tickets cost between $50,000 and $75,000 [...]
An early-day motion (EDM) signed by 11 MPs last week demanded the bank and its directors stop working to bolster Romney’s election campaign war chest and concentrate on repairing confidence and trust in the banking system instead.
But in a letter to the signatories of the motion, Cyrus Ardalan, a vice-chairman of Barclays and head of the UK and European government relations, said the bank was not a supporter of the presidential hopeful.
“I … would like to clarify that all political activity undertaken by Barclays’ US employees, including personal fundraising for specific candidates, is done so in a personal capacity, and not on behalf of Barclays,” he wrote.
Incidentally, Romney gave a speech before Barclays in 2011 and received a fee of $50,000.
Other co-hosts of the London fundraiser include a managing director at Deutsche Bank and the CEO of private equity firm TPG Capital.
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Obama has a reputation for being smart, but in light of this… I have to wonder why Obama fails to whip votes to Audit the Fed. I know the MOTU own both participants in The Kabuki Theater. But Obama could still go populist and win… yet he does not.
I know that his payday is big. But it still surprises me a bit that he’s hellbent on listening to Dimon and Wolf and ignoring his winning campaign issue.
But the MOTU are well placed. They’ve successfully bought both candidates and secured continued secrecy (The FED, TPP, Manning trial, kill list, etc.) for four more years.
Whoa, what’s Romney doing fundraising in London? I thought there is a law against using foreign money for American political campaigns?
TimWhite: It was Obama’s seeming to be populist that roused the vote in 2008, and if he doesn’t do it again, he’s out. He better do something fast.
Mittens is learning all about foreign policy, right? He’s studying hard the lessons of history and the nuances of European and U.S. partnership around our shrinking, dangerous and uneasy world. He’s studying our allies like Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece so he gets it just right when elected in November. As a buyout guru he needs to line up the leverage, banksters, pols and individuals needed to destroy the world as we know it. To finally launch a brave new world of financial aristocracy the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the 1500s. When, of course, the slave trade, war and looting were the economic drivers of free and enterprising white Christian males. I’m so glad Mittens believes in life long learning and continuing education. The world, and the U.S. especially, needs more role models like our very own Mittens. Go Mittens!
Yes, Romney has intimate connections to Big Dirty Money…so does Obama. That’s why I’ll be voting third party in November.
The point of the rise of the absolute monarchies in the 16th and 17th centuries CE was, generally speaking, the revocation of the customary rights of the peasantry — absolute monarchies were more expansive as economic entities than the remnants of the feudal system, and they paved the way for capitalism. But that was an era of expanding commerce, of the trade of tea and coffee and sugar and cotton and slaves to comfort the homes of the rising bourgeoisie of Europe.
Today what we experience is an era of declining commerce, as the capitalist system “maxes out” the resource bases of planet Earth, and so we do well not to expect a return to the oppression of previous eras. Rather, expect an indefinite standoff between populations in revolt (but without an alternate plan) and elites desperately trying to maintain supremacy.