Rahm Emanuel, as we all know, was Bill Clinton's political enforcer, and then he was a Congressman, and now he's Barack Obama's new Chief of Staff. The end. But wait, there was this part, in between Clinton and Congress, when Rahm was doing... something else? Turns out he was working for an investment bank. Scary!

Rahm left politics behind, briefly, in 1998, when he was hired by Bruce Wasserstein (owner of New York Magazine!) to work for Wasserstein Perella & Company. Emanuel made $18 million in two years, then the bank was sold to some Germans and Emanuel got a huge payout. Also he happened to strengthen the ties between the financial services sector and the Democratic party!

This is why bankers now donate huge money to Democrats, and also why Democrats all became big Reaganesque deregulators in the 1990s. The thing about the political triangulation was that it was borne just as much out of a need for money as the need to win back conservative Democratic voters (hence things like backing the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which netted the Democratic party approximately 0 additional votes and millions of additional dollars). The party was completely broke throughout the '80s, when the Republicans were raking in a fortune. Not anymore!

Anyway Emanuel just did the bank thing so that he could make a couple million bucks to keep his family comfortable before going back to national politics, where people only make six figures a year. Also this time at a bank was great, obv, because now Emanuel has so many contacts in the financial sector, and they will help him solve the crisis they caused!

(Also he did a bunch of business with various Chicago political types, like the Daleys, but obviously that is what he was hired to do.)