Cruz and Goldman Sachs, Pew and Pensions, etc.

(1) Ted Cruz and Goldman Sachs:  Hat-tip to TM--apparently Ted Cruz, who is fulminating and filibustering against Obamacare, and who suggested that people who don't have health insurance just get jobs (should we start calling him Ted Antoinette?), is covered not by the excellent health insurance for U.S. senators, but instead by Goldman Sachs, his wife's employer.  According to Daily Kos and HuffPo, it came out in a floor exchange between Cruz and Dick Durban last week that Cruz is not covered by the Senate insurance;  he apparently opts instead for insurance through Goldman, where his wife, Heidi Nelson Cruz, is some kind of southwest regional division head. And Goldman pays a $40,000 premium for very fancy coverage.

(2) Goldman and Summers:  More on Goldman, and again slightly stale news: after Larry Summers took himself out of consideration for the Fed chairmanship, the wonderful Greg Palast followed up on his piece at Vice about Summers (about a late-1990's confidential memo from Timothy Geithner to Summers) with a great piece about Summers' deregulatory impulse, Larry Summers: Goldman Sacked. Starts with a great anecdote about Summers asking Stiglitz at a White House meeting what he thought Goldman Sachs would think about some U.S. economic policy.

I also enjoyed Bill Black's semi-defense of Summers, which seemed to upset some people: Larry Summers Got a Bad Rap on Stimulus: Obama Is the Problem. Bill has criticized Summers on all kinds of other fronts in other posts and articles.

(3) Pew and Pensions:  Matt Taibbi has a great piece in Rolling Stone, Looting the Pension Funds: How Wall Street Robs Public Workers. There is also the new report from David Sirota and the Institute for America's Future, The Plot Against Pensions: The Pew–Arnold campaign to undermine America’s retirement security – and leave taxpayers with the bill.

For D&S's piece on this topic, see Katherine Sciacchitano's Making Labor Pay, our annual labor issue cover story last year.

That's it for now.

--Chris Sturr