Barack Obama has begun an overhaul of his inner circle, lending the White House a more business-friendly face with the appointment of an outsider banker, William Daley, as his chief of staff.
Daley continues the heavy Chicago bent of Obama’s White House. He is a son of the legendary Chicago mayor Richard Daley and brother of the city’s outgoing mayor, also named Richard. But he marks a departure for the president after two years in office by dint of his considerable Wall Street experience.
The new chief of staff has for the past seven years been a senior executive at JP Morgan Chase, and before that worked for a hedge fund and in telecoms. He straddles the business-politics divide, having been Bill Clinton’s commerce secretary for three years from 1997 and managed Al Gore’s failed run for the presidency in 2000. Read More
