This is what the US is up against with reforming the industry that trashed the global economy. These people - Republicans and Democrats alike - have no shame. The money is surely good but how do they sleep at night? Why do flag-waving politicians hate America? Hypocrites. Every last one of them.
The former congressman Michael G. Oxley, the Ohio Republican whose name is on one of the most famous pieces of business regulatory legislation in history — the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that imposed tougher accounting measures on firms after scandals at Enron and other companies — is a senior adviser to the Nasdaq stock market. Mr. Oxley received $40,000 in the last quarter of 2009 for lobbying to limit the ownership of banks and other competitors in clearinghouses.
Another former Republican congressman, Richard H. Baker of Louisiana, served for 12 years as chairman of the House banking panel that oversaw capital markets before he left Congress in 2008. He is now president and a registered lobbyist for the Managed Funds Association, which represents the largest trading firms in the multitrillion-dollar hedge fund industry. The association reported spending $3.7 million last year alone to lobby federal officials on regulations for the hedge fund industry.
An analysis by Public Citizen found that at least 70 former members of Congress were lobbying for Wall Street and the financial services sector last year, including two former Senate majority leaders (Trent Lott and Bob Dole), two former House majority leaders (Richard Gephardt and Dick Armey) and a former House speaker (Dennis Hastert).
In addition to lawmakers themselves, data from the Center for Responsive Politics counted 56 former Congressional aides on the Senate or House banking committees who went on to use their expertise to lobby for the financial sector. Visa Inc. had the most former Congressional officials with 37 lobbyists, following closely by other financial powerhouses like Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Citigroup and the American Bankers Association, according to the Public Citizen analysis.
