Pete Orswag in at CitiBank.

or,
"But Dad, ALL the successful organizational kids are doing it..."

File under the "surprise, surprise" tag. Jim Fallows bends over backwards trying to be PC about this, but he's spot on in his analysis:

[A]nother category, which I think is even more important, involves things that everyone "knows" but has stopped noticing. This is very similar to what is called "Village" behavior in the big time media.

An item in this second category has just come up: the decision of Peter Orszag, until recently the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Barack Obama, to join Citibank in a senior position. Exactly how much it will pay is not clear, but informed guesses are several million dollars per year. Citibank, of course, was one of the institutions most notably dependent on federal help to survive in these past two years.
...
I believe Orszag (whom I do not know at all) to be a faultlessly honest man, by the letter of the law. I am sorry for his judgment in taking this job,* but I am implying nothing whatsoever "unethical" in a technical sense. But in the grander scheme, his move illustrates something that is just wrong.

The idea that someone would help plan, advocate, and carry out an economic policy that played such a crucial role in the survival of a financial institution -- and then, less than two years after his Administration took office, would take a job that (a) exemplifies the growing disparities the Administration says it's trying to correct and (b) unavoidably will call on knowledge and contacts Orszag developed while in recent public service -- this says something bad about what is taken for granted in American public life.

When we notice similar patterns in other countries -- for instance, how many offspring and in-laws of senior Chinese Communist officials have become very, very rich -- we are quick to draw conclusions about structural injustices. Americans may not "notice" Orszag-like migrations, in the sense of devoting big news coverage to them. But these stories pile up in the background to create a broad American sense that politics is rigged, and opportunity too. Why do we wince a little bit when we now hear "Change you can believe in?" This is an illustration.
_____
* What choice did he have? He could have waited a while. He could have gone to a lucrative job at a business school or even a think tank, for perhaps half-a-million per year versus many millions. He could have written a book and gone big time on the lecture circuit. He could have taken a corporate job somewhere other than finance. He could have taken a finance job someplace other than Citibank (or Goldman Sachs or AIG etc..)

[Illustration is Thomas Nast's famous caricature of Boss Tweed, in an earlier era of pluto-politics.]

(Still on vacation. Just consider this a PSA post -- or news not to be missed in our blessed holiday season! Can't wait to see what the satirical writers do with this one -- riper for the pickings now than even the much-discussed Queen of Caribou and that failed Senatorial candidate who once admitted to dabbling with witch-dating...)