WhoWhatWhy: The Game That Goes On and On - A Swiss Bank, A President, and the Permanent Government

NEW YORK, April 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- WhoWhatWhy.com reports exclusively today on the web of interests revealed by President Obama's choice of a golfing partner during a vacation last summer.

In a lengthy investigative article, WhoWhatWhy editor-in-chief Russ Baker explores the president's decision to golf with Robert Wolf, the U.S. head of UBS, a controversial Swiss bank which had just paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle charges it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes on a massive scale. UBS benefited from the U.S. government's decision to bail out AIG, the insurance giant that faced collapse early in the financial crisis.

The article looks at UBS's ability to influence the two major political parties by placing top officials in prominent roles in both the campaign of Barack Obama, and in that of his Republican opponent, John McCain. Wolf served as a top fundraiser for Obama, and his vice-chairman, former senator Phil Gramm, who led efforts to deregulate financial institutions in the years prior to the recent collapse, was a top economic adviser in McCain's campaign. Though UBS racked up one of the worst performance records by a bank, Obama has named UBS's Wolf an economic adviser.

Beyond looking at UBS's influence, the article expands into a larger examination of the post-partisan and transnational financial and corporate interests that co-opt up-and-coming politicians. It also documents  troubling activities and associations, which have been the subject of investigation and legal action by multiple state governments, by Washington, and by other countries. In one instance, where UBS and AIG officials were arrested on charges they participated in a half-billion-dollar tax avoidance scheme, the UBS official being led away in handcuffs by Brazilian authorities bragged that he would not be in custody long thanks to the influence of money.

As the article shows, the efforts by these banks to gain continuing influence have historically intersected with the interests of some of the world's most repressive regimes, including that of the South African apartheid government, the Shah of Iran, the Saudi royal family and the Philippines strongman Ferdinand Marcos. And it provides context for the lack of substantive regulatory reform here in the United States.

The full article can be found at http://www.WhoWhatWhy.com , a non-profit, nonpartisan investigative news site. It was written by Russ Baker, author of the 2009 book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, which has a detailed account of some of the players and transactions characterized in the article.

SOURCE WhoWhatWhy

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