Last Thursday, inspired by the release of White House visitor logs, we launched a new project to compile information on visitors to the Obama White House.

In less than a week, analysts Priscilla, sundin, ellenp, and destructor have built and updated profiles for over 100 individuals who have met with the president or one of his top advisers (so far, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and chief economic adviser Larry Summers).  We profiled visitors that met with one of these individuals in a small group setting (ten or less total people).

Here are some initial observations about the types of people that get to meet with top White House officials (specifically the president, Summers, and Emanuel):

Read more…

Bloomberg reported yesterday that the New York Fed pushed AIG to withhold key information about bonuses and swap counterparties in late 2008.  Today, the story is blowing up, with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and a range of other outlets picking up on the story.

There is an incredible conflict of interest at the heart of the AIG-New York Fed dealings: the very same New York Fed lawyers who pushed AIG to withhold the names of counterparties also advised Goldman Sachs on large deals in 2008.

Goldman Sachs was one of AIG’s largest counterparties, and received a controversial 100% payout on its swap contracts with the firm.

Read more…

It’s been almost one year since Obama’s inauguration — and one year since LittleSis launched. At this time last year we were scrambling to add up-to-date data about the past two presidential administrations, and the incoming one, in preparation for launch. We built lists like this, this, and this (with lots of help from our friends), and managed to include some presidential data at a time when the American presidency naturally had everyone’s attention.

It seems appropriate, approaching this anniversary, to return to this project of collecting and updating data on the Obama administration.  The release of White House visitor logs, and the awesome new tool Sunlight Foundation put together to help research the visitors (which cross-references names in the logs with LittleSis data), also seem like invitations to improve our data on the administration.

Starting today, we’ll be spotlighting Inside the Obama administration, the LittleSis research group focused on compiling accurate and up-to-date information on the current administration. Priscilla has led the group over the past few months, doing a tremendous job updating profiles for Treasury and White House officials. But there is lots more to be done, especially now that we have the visitor data to work with — we need your help!

Read more…

The White House’s most recent monthly release of visitor records was extraordinary in that it included a comprehensive dump of records for the second half of September 2009. Previous releases were limited to records for names specifically requested by reporters and other watchdogs; this one includes every single visitor record. Kudos to the White House for releasing the data (still wondering about that tunnel, though).

At 30,000 records, the data set is bulky, so I used a spreadsheet to pare it down a bit (eliminating 20,000 records for people who toured the White House), then uploaded some select records into a Google Calendar for easy viewing.

Read more…

A few weeks ago, in response to Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article on “Obama’s Big Sellout” — a blistering critique of Obama’s economic team — Tim Fernholz posted a lengthy fact-check of the piece on the American Prospect blog. Perhaps hoping to emulate Taibbi’s provocative style, Fernholz called Taibbi’s piece a “nightmare of a story,” a “factual mess,” and a “conspiracy theorist’s dream.” He then identified one factual error, calling out Taibbi most sharply on matters of opinion and analysis.

Much of Taibbi’s piece focused on Robert Rubin’s network and its dominance of economic posts in the Obama administration, analysis which Fernholz dismissed as conspiratorial.

Interesting, then, that Fernholz recently met with one of the Obama economic officials and former Rubin underlings mentioned in Taibbi’s piece: Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council.

Read more…