News
This Morning in DC
October 28, 2009
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| The Trump Organization’s Eric Trump was one of our featured speakers in DC this morning at the fifth in our series of “New Washington” conferences about the rising influence of the federal city during the financial crisis. Here he joins legendary former Redskin (and NY Jet) John Riggins (NFL Hall of Fame ’92), who also participated. Last spring, Eric supervised the purchase of Lowe’s Island golf course near Dulles airport, which Washingtonians hope herald expanding Trump interest in the market. |
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| Earl Devaney, known informally at the Stimulus Czar (as Chairman of the Recovery, Accountability, and Transparency Board) says that the website his office supervises, Recovery.Gov, will detail starting this Friday all stimulus spending down to the project and payee. He says that, in keeping with the Administration’s mission of transparency, information will not be withheld and some of it may prove embarrassing. On a lighter note, he said that because his office believes in transparency, he didn’t want to hire an extravagant consultant to design a logo, so he just held an internal contest which a receptionist won by designing a “fierce looking eagle.” |
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| Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff offered advice to local business people: Don’t just try to sell an “intriguing gizmo” to the government without being able to say what big problem it solves. He says the most valuable products these days focus on collecting and analyzing data, and identity management. |
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| Longtime National Association of Manufacturers CEO Jerry Jasinowski (here with Cherry Bekaert & Holland managing partner Susan Moser), credited Fed Chairman Bernanke’s release of two trillion dollars of liquidity into the economy as creating the stock market boom but said it hasn’t translated yet to stimulating Main St. |
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| Carlyle Group co-founder Ed Mathias, right, said the Washington region will eventually be “buried in money” over the period of the stimulus. He also said it would be “hard to overestimate” what’s happening in China and to a lesser extent Brazil and India; he said Carlyle just opened an office in a Chinese town of 15 million that he’d never heard of. Lazard’s Bill Farmer, center, predicted continuing consolidation of the aerospace and defense sector. Eric Trump said real estate has to be analyzed these days on a “zip code by zip code basis.” |
