sound of the beginning

I guess this is some type of change. Of what, I guess we will see, unless we ask for better.

Bruce Wasserstein, the current chairman of the Lazard Freres investment bank, is very close to, and is the financier-controller of Rahm Emanuel, newly appointed Chief of Staff to Barack Obama. Wasserstein put $18 million into Emanuel's pockets over 30 months, and then boosted his campaigns for Congress with Lazard Freres money. Wasserstein, who was known as "Bid Em Up Bruce," was involved in some of the most leveraged and depraved mergers of the 1970s and 1980s--Philip Morris's $13 billion takeover of Kraft, the $24.6 billon KKR buyout of RJR Nabisco; in 1988, he co-founded Wasserstein Perella and became the leveraged buy-out firm's CEO. In 1999, after Emanuel had left a post in the Clinton Administration, Wasserstein hired Emanuel (who had no financial background) to be managing director of Wasserstein-Perella's Chicago office. Emanuel was then brought in to work on eight big merger and acquisition deals, in which Emanuel was sometimes a secondary figure, but this was a way to reward Emanuel with fees and bonuses. Emanuel worked at Wasserstein Perella for only 30 months from late 1999 until early 2002, but according to Congressional financial disclosure documents, he pocketed $18 million for his work, more than half a million dollars per month. In the meantime, Wasserstein sold Wasserstein Perella to Dresdner Bank on September 18, 2000, for a whopping $1.37 billion (pocketing almost half that amount for himself). Wasserstein moved his offices to London. In 2002, Wasserstein was appointed chairman of Lazard Freres. Steered by old wealthy families of Britain and continental Europe, Wasserstein was the instrument for an intense power struggle to take over Lazard Freres, against its then controllers: Michel David-Weill, Antoine Bernheim, and Jean Guyot. The British-Wasserstein faction won. All during this time at Lazard, Wasserstein was Rahm Emanuel's financier godfather. According to records, when Rahm Emanuel decided to run for U.S. Congress for 2002, the {first contribution} he received as recorded on Oct. 19, 2001, was made out by Bruce Wasserstein personally for $1,000, payable to Friends of Rahm Emanuel, his campaign vehicle. In subsequent years, Wasserstein funneled tens of thousands of dollars of Lazard Freres money to Emanuel's Congressional campaigns. During the 2003-2004 election cycle, officers and partners of Lazard Freres & Co., contributed $22,000 to Emanuel. Other large contributors included the giant Citadel Investment hedge fund, now in the news because it is disintegrating; Madison Dearborn Partners, a buy-out firm; and Allianz, the giant insurance and banking company.