Wall Street's Political Medicis

President Bush today chose for his new treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., chief executive of Goldman Sachs. The investment banking firm is very active politically, primarily (but not exclusively) on behalf of Democrats. Former Goldman Sachs executives who entered politics have included Robert Rubin (treasury secretary to Bill Clinton), Jon Corzine (New Jersey senator and now governor), Josh Bolten (Bush White House chief of staff), and Stephen Friedman (former chief of Bush's National Economic Council). According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit that crunches data from the Federal Election Commission and other sources, Goldman Sachs has, in individual contributions by its members, PAC contributions, and "soft money" contributions to political parties, given nearly $23 million to political candidates for federal office since 1989. In case you're wondering, that's quite a lot. The charts on this and the three succeeding pages are from the Center for Responsive Politics' Web site, opensecrets.org. To read the footnotes, roll your mouse over the portions highlighted in yellow.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

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