Obama shows hints of his year in global finance
Tied markets to social aid
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama has authored two books, heralded for their poetic reflections on the conundrums of identity and the possibilities of politics. But his first professional writing was for a weekly newsletter more concerned with how investing in gold futures in Sao Paulo and London could be used to hedge against the fluctuating value of Brazilian cruzeiros.
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.
"I think that back in the '60s and '70s, a lot of the way we regulated industry was top-down command and control," Obama told Fox News Channel in April. "And I think that the Republican Party and people who thought about the markets came with the notion that, you know what, if you simply set some guidelines, some rules, and incentives for businesses, let them figure out how they're going to, for example, reduce pollution."
As a political science major at Columbia concentrating on international relations, Obama took a senior seminar focused in large part on aid and capital flows between the first and third worlds. "It was a subject everyone was talking about," said Michael Baron, who taught the seminar.
Obama recently told CNN that "it was natural for me to be interested in international affairs," given the influence of his mother, an anthropologist he described as "a specialist in international development, who was one of the early practitioners of microfinancing . . . helping women buy a loom or a sewing machine or a milk cow to be able to enter into the economy."
Yet unlike many of his peers, Obama did not spend his senior year making plans to attend graduate or professional school. Obama, who expressed interest in becoming a writer, found a job as an editor at Business International Corp. after graduating in 1983.
"I thought that he was going to be a novelist or something like that," said Cathy Lazere, who interviewed Obama and became his immediate supervisor. "He seemed like the type of person who was observing the world and taking it in."
Obama took charge of updating Financing Foreign Operations, a yearbook (annual subscription: $900) for which he edited manuscripts from correspondents in 40 countries. Obama also wrote for Business International Money Report, a newsletter covering currency issues and monetary policy. "He had a good profile for Business International: bright, articulate, a good writer, and a knowledge of world issues and affairs," said Lou Celi, an editor of Obama's.
In "Dreams From My Father," his 1995 memoir, Obama describes being hired by an unnamed "consulting house to multinational corporations."
"Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe," Obama wrote. "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.) They say that while offering consulting functions to clients, Business International was far more a publishing house than a consulting firm.
Founded in 1954 to publish a magazine targeted at an increasingly globalized managerial class, Business International covered a broad array of subjects, including reports on economic policy making and recommendations for executive insurance policies.
The office had a collegiate feel: Employees rarely wore suits, and writers at Obama's level did not - as he suggests in one anecdote - have their own secretaries, according to fellow workers at the time. Obama had to share a Wang computer terminal with another employee; he would often edit manuscripts by hand, smoking Marlboros. When he interviewed finance specialists, he did so by phone. "None of us were hobnobbing with multinational corporate executives," said Susan Arterian Chang, a writer who worked alongside Obama.
The flagship publication had an activist bent, as an early champion of corporate social responsibility. A 1983 "call for action" encouraged multinational compa- nies to push not only for lower corporate taxes in the countries in which they operated but also reduced weapons spending, as a means to promote "peace through greater global understanding and economic integration."
" They were boosters for multinationals and they thought globalism was the way we should be going," Chang said.
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.
"If you're just working on the technical financial points, the social implications are out of the question," said Michael Veseth, a professor of international political economy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. "You're just dealing with, 'How am I getting my money from here to there?' "
Still, a belief in the primacy of markets as engines for both the creation of wealth and social progress prevailed at the company - as became evident in an office debate between Obama and a colleague over whether to trade with South Africa during apartheid.
Obama "made some comment like there should be a boycott of any company doing business there," recalled William Millar, a writer for the money report. "I said he needed to realize that it's the non-South African companies who were hiring blacks and giving them positions of authority with decent pay. That's what accelerates change - not isolation."
Such discussions were rare for Obama, described by peers as a distant presence in the office: diligent about his work but rarely engaged by it, uninterested in after-work drinks with colleagues. "He was all business; he didn't chat and gossip," said Chang.
"He always seemed aloof, a little bit of a stray cat," added Celi.
After about a year at Business International, Obama found a job as a community organizer in Chicago. "I remember telling him he was making a big mistake," said Celi, who conducted Obama's exit interview. "He let me know he had bigger fish to fry."
Moving to Chicago gave Obama a local framework to address some of the issues of poverty and development that had interested him in a global context, said Jerry Kellman, who hired him for the project. "He believed in markets and he believed in competition, but he didn't believe the market was a level playing field," said Kellman. Working in neighborhoods facing high rates of foreclosure, he said, Obama was bothered by the complexity of mortgage documents: More transparency in their language could help consumers make better decisions.
"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. 