Who is Peter Sutherland?

[Large Sarge]

http://www.trilateral.org/membship/bios/ps.htm


Peter Sutherland
Peter Sutherland Peter Sutherland is chairman of BP plc (1997 - current). He is also chairman of Goldman Sachs International (1995 - current). He was appointed chairman of the London School of Economics in 2008. He is currently UN special representative for migration and development. Before these appointments, he was the founding director-general of the World Trade Organisation. He had previously served as director general of GATT since July 1993 and was instrumental in concluding the Uruguay GATT Round Negotiations. Prior to this position, he was chairman of Allied Irish Banks from 1989-1993 and chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Institute of Public Administration (Maastricht) 1991-1996. Educated at Gonzaga College, University College Dublin and at the Honorable Society of the King's Inns, from 1969 to 1971 Mr. Sutherland was a tutor in law at University College Dublin. From 1981 until early 1982, he was attorney general of Ireland and was a member of the Council of State. He was reappointed in 1982 until 1984 when he was nominated by the Government of Ireland as a member of the Commission of the European Communities in charge of competition policy. During his first year at the Commission he was also responsible for social Affairs, health and education and thereafter for relations with the European Parliament. He serves on the Board of Directors of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc and is associated with the following organisations: World Economic Forum, Foundation Board member; The Federal Trust, president; European Policy Centre Advisory Council, president; European Round Table of Industrialists, vice-chairman; the Royal Irish Academy, member; goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation; and consultor for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See. He has published numerous articles and the book "Premier Janvier 1993, ce qui va changer en Europe" (Paris). He was presented with the Robert Schuman Medal for his work on European Integration and the David Rockefeller Award of the Trilateral Commission. Mr. Sutherland was a Trilateral Commission author of 21st Century Strategies of the Trilateral Countries: In Concert or Conflict? (1999, with Robert B. Zoellick and Hisashi Owada) and was re-elected in 2006 for a third term as European Chairman.

February 2009

[Silver Rocket Bitches!]

In December 2006 he was appointed as a financial adviser to the Vatican.

A very powerful man, indeed.

[VX1]

See, this is why I refuse to work for Satan. The hours are terrible, and he works you to death.

[keehah]

Worth noting he left his BP Chairman position before the spill earlier this year.

Peter Sutherland is a flexian.

Worth saving some more on his interesting bio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutherland

Peter Denis Sutherland, Honorary KCMG [British Knight] (born 25 April 1946) is an international businessman and former Attorney General of Ireland, associated with the Fine Gael party (part of the Christian Democrat bloc). He is a barrister by profession, and is also Senior Counsel at the Irish Bar. He is also known for serving in a variety of business and political roles.

Son of the late William "Billy" Sutherland, an insurance broker, Peter Sutherland was educated at Gonzaga College, a Jesuit day school in Dublin and then studied law at University College Dublin. He played prop forward for the UCD rugby team and was club captain, a role he later filled at Landsdowne Football Club, before retiring from the sport in his mid-20s. He remains an active member of Lansdowne F.C.

After UCD, he studied at the King's Inns in Dublin and was called to the Bar in 1969 and practiced until 1981 when, aged 34, he was the youngest Attorney General of Ireland. He served under two Governments led by Garret FitzGerald. He also advised the FitzGerald government on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland which introduced a constitutional ban on abortion, though Sutherland opposed the wording on grounds that it was ambiguous and unclear.

He was appointed to the European Commission in 1985 and had responsibility for competition policy and, later, also for education. He has said that he was especially pleased to have helped to establish the ERASMUS programme (European Regional Action Scheme for Mobility of University Students) that allows European University students to study in other member states.

He was the youngest ever European Commissioner and served in the first Delors Commission, where he played a crucial role in opening up competition across Europe, particularly the airline, telecoms, and energy sectors. Subsequently he was Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organisation). Later Mickey Kantor, the US Trade Minister, credited him with being the father of globalization and said that without him there would have been no WTO. The Uruguay round of global trade talks, concluded in 1994 with Sutherland as chair of GATT, produced the biggest trade agreement in history and established the World Trade Organisation.

He is non-executive Chairman of Goldman Sachs International (a registered UK broker-dealer, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs). He was previously non-executive chairman of BP and was a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group until he was asked to leave the board when it had to be taken over by the UK government to avoid bankruptcy. He also formerly served on the board of ABB.

He is on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, a chairman of the Trilateral Commission and vice chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists.

He is a member of the Comite d'Honneur of the Institute of European Affairs, and an Honorary President of the European Movement Ireland.

He was appointed as a member of the Hong Kong Chief Executive's Council of International Advisers in the years of 1998–2005.

He is President of the Federal Trust for Education and Research, a British think tank. He is Chairman of The Ireland Fund of Great Britain, part of The Ireland Funds. He is a member of the advisory council of Business for New Europe, a British pro-European think-tank.

In 2005, he was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. In Spring 2006 he was appointed Chair of London School of Economics Council commencing in 2008.

Peter Sutherland also serves on the International Advisory Board of IESE, the eminent graduate business school of the prestigious Spanish university, the University of Navarra.

In January 2006, he was appointed by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan as his Special Representative for Migration. In this position, he was responsible for promoting the establishment of a Global Forum on Migration and Development, a state-led effort open to all UN members that is meant to help governments better understand how migration can benefit their development goals. The Global Forum was acclaimed by UN Member States at the UN High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development, in September 2006, and will be launched in Brussels in July 2007.

On 5 December 2006, he was appointed as Consultor of the Extraordinary Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (a financial adviser to the Vatican).

On 22 January 2010 he said while in Dublin that Ireland should have fewer universities.

In an interview with The Irish Times in early 2010, Sutherland revealed that in summer 2009, during a holiday, one of his children noticed a swelling on his throat while they sat on a beach. Within a week he was back home in London undergoing a major operation. Sutherland had an operation for throat cancer in August 2009 and following the operation he underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

For Sutherland, a Europhile, the worst part about his illness was missing the “mortal combat” of fighting for the Yes vote in the second Lisbon referendum.

Sutherland visited Brian Lenihan to tell him what a great job he thought he was doing and to say that Lenihan had the potential to be one of the great taoisigh of the 21st century. Lenihan was taken aback, he says. Sutherland believes Ireland failed in economic terms over most of the past four decades with the exception of a “sparkling period” from 1994 to 2002 when the State took advantage of EU changes freeing up the movement of goods, capital and services across Europe.

Outside banking, Sutherland in early 2010 finished a 13-year stint as chairman of BP, Europe’s largest oil company. At one point during his tenure, the company was valued on the stock market at £236 billion (it is currently worth about £120 billion) and was making £42 million a day in profits.

He was twice offered the job of UN High Commissioner for Refugees by Kofi Annan, a fact, he says, that he has never disclosed publicly before, but he declined both times due to other commitments. He cites his work at GATT and the introduction of the Erasmus student exchange programme when he briefly held the education portfolio at the Commission in 1986 as his two most rewarding achievements.

The next stage of his career Surtherland disclosed that he has decided to join three boards – at German insurer Allianz; Koç Holding, Turkey’s largest conglomerate; and a Chinese shipping company.

[keehah]

The First HuffPost Book Club Pick of 2010: Shadow Elite by Janine Wedel (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-first-huffpost-book-c_b_412999.html)

My first HuffPost Book Club selection of 2010 is Janine Wedel's Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market. It's a gripping, disquieting book that exposes and explains why it's been so hard to bring about any real change in our country -- why Washington no longer seems capable of addressing the problems our nation faces. Fingers have been pointed at everything from gerrymandering to partisan polarization to the misuse of the filibuster. But, according to Wedel, the real problem is much deeper -- and more disturbing -- than any of these.

As she writes in Shadow Elite, a new "transnational" class of elites has taken over our country: "The mover and shaker who serves at one and the same time as business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and government adviser glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services. It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible."

Wedel dubs this new class of influencers "flexians," and the closed system they've created for themselves the "flex net." She attributes their power, among other factors, to the "embrace of 'truthiness,' which allows people to play with how they present themselves to the world, regardless of fact or track record."

Wedel cites retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey as one example of this new international super-class -- a member of the shadow elite that serves in government posts, moves to the private sector, goes on TV, and collects a healthy paycheck from companies that benefit when the power broker's advice is taken. McCaffrey was one of the Pentagon-pundits-for-pay exposed by two Pulitzer-winning front-page stories in the New York Times last year. Yet even as I write this, he's on TV giving us his wisdom on how to fight terrorism. Because, as Wedel points out again and again, members of the shadow elite keep morphing into their next incarnation no matter how often their conflicts of interest and their undermining of the public interest are revealed.

Another key flexian, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, is on full display right now in Newsweek's special "Issues 2010" edition, in which he pens a lengthy essay on "Getting the Economy Back on Track," failing, in a very flexian way, to explain or acknowledge -- let alone apologize for -- the key role he played in getting the economy off track in the first place.

Rubin's resume is the personification of the flex net in action, as he seamlessly moved between political positions (Director of the National Economic Council, Treasury Secretary), private positions (as a board member and senior counselor at Citigroup, he received over $126 million in cash and stock), advisory positions (including serving on the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and the SEC's Market Oversight and Financial Services Advisory Committee), and stints on a World Bank task force on Growth and Development, work as an unofficial economic advisor to President Obama, and his current position as co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.

You can read Rubin's 2,500+ word Newsweek piece here. But I was much more interested in the 28-word bio at the end of it: "Rubin is a former secretary of the Treasury (1995-99). He now serves as co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a fellow of the Harvard Corporation." Given that the piece is about the economic meltdown, it's telling that the bio doesn't include his nearly ten years at Citibank -- during the very time that ended with the bank having to be saved by the American taxpayers.

But that's how the flex net works: you are able to wreak destruction, bank a tidy profit, then go along your merry way, pontificating about how "markets have an inherent and inevitable tendency -- probably rooted in human nature -- to go to excess, both on the upside and the downside." And how many people remember key details in Rubin's career like his vociferous opposition, during the Clinton years, to the regulation of derivatives -- a key factor in the meltdown? Or his lobbying the Treasury during the Bush years to prevent the downgrading of the credit rating of Enron -- a debtor of Citigroup?

Last month, Janine Wedel came to HuffPost's D.C. office to talk about her book. Our team was riveted as she painted a portrait of our political culture not from the perspective of a political scientist but from that of a social anthropologist. As a professor of public policy and social anthropology at George Mason, Wedel spent years studying what happened in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, and sees a similar co-mingling of state power and private power at work here.

Take the health care fight. Though Wedel completed her book before the most recent twists and turns in the legislative process, reading Shadow Elite you get the feeling you are being given a peek at the how-to manual the insurance and drug companies -- and their water-carriers in Congress -- used to ensure that what may well have started out as a push for real reform ended up as an industry windfall.

After all, the final Senate bill (which looks like it will be the base for the final bill sent to Obama), is essentially the same bill that was drawn up months ago in Max Baucus' office by Baucus staffers who used to be health care executives, and by health care lobbyists who used to be Baucus staffers.

The shadow elite clearly knew that the months and months of so-called debate over the issue was nothing more than a charade -- the ultimate outcome never in doubt. The bill was created in the shadows. The public process since then has essentially been like a Hollywood adaptation -- complete with the requisite third act happy ending (or, in the words of our elected officials, a "historic" ending).

"The new breed of players," writes Wedel, "who operate at the nexus of official and private power, cannot only co-opt public policy agendas, crafting policy with their own purposes in mind. They test the time-honored principles of both the canons of accountability of the modern state and the codes of competition of the free market. In so doing, they reorganize relations between bureaucracy and business to their advantage, and challenge the walls erected to separate them. As these walls erode, players are better able to use official power and resources without public oversight."

That's a spot-on description of what happened with health care -- as well as a spot-on description of the totally-lacking-in-transparency bailout of the financial system. Remember how the bailout was supposed to take care of not just Wall Street but Main Street? Well, the former ended up with record profits and bonuses while the latter is looking at double-digit unemployment -- and millions of foreclosures and bankruptcies -- for the rest of the year.

As for the "embrace of truthiness" Wedel writes about, witness this exchange from This Week between Jake Tapper and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. Tapper asked Gibbs about Obama's broken promise to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN and whether Obama will at least push for transparency for the final reconciliation process. Gibbs' response:

Well, Jake, first of all, let's take a step back and understand that this is a process legislatively that has played out over the course of nine months. There have been a countless number of public hearings. The Senate did a lot of their voting at 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning on C-SPAN. A lot of this debate -- I think what the president promised and pledged was so that you could see who was fighting for their constituents and who was fighting for drug and insurance companies...
Talk about being flexible -- Gibbs is a world-class rhetorical yogi. So all that talk during the campaign about transparency now just comes down to Congressional votes being shown on C-SPAN -- as they've always been?

The worst part is that Gibbs' posturing about being on the side of constituents rather than the drug and insurance industries sounds so normal. Gibbs knows all too well that he's supposed to shake his fist at the insurance companies, just as Larry Summers and Tim Geithner -- who both feature prominently in Shadow Elite -- know they're supposed to talk tough to the banks and vow to end "too-big-to-fail." But, as Wedel writes, they've rigged the system so they can "institutionalize their subversion of it."

And in the same way that our regulatory structure was outmoded and unable to deal with the complex new financial instruments devised by Wall Street, the rhetoric we use today to describe what's happening to our system is not up to the task. According to Wedel, terms like "lobbyist," "interest group," "corruption," and "conflict of interest" no longer suffice.

The new flexians are, as HuffPost's Arthur Delaney dubbed them, "influence launderers." That's why a flexian like Tom Daschle never needed to bother registering as a lobbyist. He could do the same things, selling off the public trust to the highest bidder, and then go around bragging about how he's never sullied himself with actual lobbying.

With our capitalist version of what Wedel describes as the "merging of state and private power that characterized both communism and postcommunism," we're getting to the point where the only difference between senior congressional staffers and the lobbyists and influence launderers whose ranks they'll soon join is the size of their paychecks. They just have to do a few years in Congress before joining their former bosses. It's a kind of grad school: put in a few semesters getting your Masters of Influence and you won't have to worry about paying off those school loans.

So how can we wrest control of our government from the Shadow Elite?

As Wedel says, the first step is to understand. "Merely exposing certain activities is not enough," she writes, "framing them is essential." We need to reframe how we look at and think about and respond to what is being done in our name and with our resources.