BHO's Year in Global Finance

by: Sharyn

Wed Aug 06, 2008 at 16:37:26 PM EDT

Obama Shows Hints of His Year in Global Finance

By Sasha Issenberg
Globe Staff / August 6, 2008

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Obama rarely talks about his year spent within the arcane sphere of global finance as a junior editor for Business International Corp., a publisher based in New York. In a recent biographical campaign ad, Obama says he chose to "pass up Wall Street jobs and go to Chicago instead," suggesting that after graduating from Columbia University he cast aside material pursuits in favor of self-sacrifice as a community organizer.

But in the years since, Obama has demonstrated an economic worldview bearing some common priorities with the first company for which he worked. At some points in his legislative career and presidential campaign, Obama demonstrated a willingness to let markets run their course when some other Democrats had sought a more forceful government hand. He rejects mandates for adults to buy health insurance and encourages the expansion of global exchanges for carbon-emissions credits. He has helped make it easier for private companies to take over public housing projects.

In "Dreams From My Father," his 1995 memoir, Obama describes being hired by an unnamed "consulting house to multinational corporations." .... "Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors - see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand - and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry."

Those who worked at Business International say Obama's brief account contains inaccuracies or misrepresentations about the company. (Obama has acknowledged fictionalizing narrative elements in the book.)

But the publications for which Obama worked had far narrower interests. Written for bankers and financial executives, Business International's money report delivered practical, if often rarefied, advice for eluding foreign-exchange rules that often limited the ability of investors to efficiently control their assets.  ........

"Obama is pro-market, and he has a keen understanding of what free markets do and of the needs and value of business," said Cass Sunstein, a law professor who was a colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago.

Yet Obama's campaign says the experience was not a particularly strong influence on his thinking today. "Barack Obama's views on the American economy and the global marketplace were shaped by a variety of experiences," said spokesman Ben LaBolt.

Sasha Issenberg can be reached at sissenberg@globe.com.

http://www.boston.com/news/nat...