Saturday, November 8, 2008

Barack Obama: "Titan of Industry"?

Who knew that Barack Obama did a short stint as a financial writer among the Masters of the Universe? He never fails to surprise.

From CNN Money:

Barack Obama's first job out of college, in 1983, was at the corporate consulting firm Business International Corp. in Manhattan. He started as a researcher but quickly rose to the position of financial writer. He had a Reuters computer screen on his desk, with emerald messages blinking from around the globe. He had his own office and a secretary and wore a suit and tie and carried a briefcase. He wrote about interest rate swaps and met with Japanese financiers and German bond traders.

When he caught his image in the shiny elevator doors, he sometimes imagined himself as a "captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal," he writes in his memoir.

Those moments soon passed, overwhelmed by pangs of guilt that he wasn't following the call to be a community organizer, helping poor neighborhoods ravaged by corporate and government neglect. Inside these business trappings, the 22-year-old Columbia University graduate felt like a "spy behind enemy lines."

Read more here

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