April Foley, chairman of the Export-Import Bank, will be the new ambassador of the United States to Hungary from the fall of 2006.
This is the third appointment by US President George W Bush, following current incumbent (and a Bush relative) George Herbert Walker, who has been the ambassador since 2003, and Nancy Goodman Brinker .
Foley, said to have been Bush's girlfriend while they were at Harvard together, was born in Avon Lake, Ohio and graduated from Smith College before receiving her Masters degree in business administration from Harvard University.
Later, she served as director of business planning for corporate strategy with PEPSICO, Inc as well as director of strategy for Reader's Digest Association and worked for Pfizer, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. In Nov 2003, Foley was appointed a member of the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, having been nominated by Bush. In an article on the President for The Washington Post in 1999, Foley wrote that she met George Bush at Harvard, where the two dated for a short time and later stayed friends.
How small is Bush's circle? He replaces a relative with a girlfriend who worked for Viagra.
April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats outdid Republicans last year in attracting political donations from investment banks, brokerages and fund managers for the first time since 1994, helped by support from hedge funds and companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co.
Democrats got $13.6 million, or 52 percent of the financial industry's $26.3 million in political donations in 2005, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington group that researches the influence of money on elections and public policy. In the two years leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Republicans received 52 percent of the $91.6 million given by the industry.
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Merrill Lynch, the world's largest securities firm, is home to another one of Bush's 2004 Rangers, Chief Executive Stanley O'Neal. Merrill's political action committee, which pools executives' donations, is on track to give more money to Democratic candidates than to Republicans for the 2006 election for the first time in the PAC's quarter-century history, if current trends hold.
Why would Wall Street have a change of heart? Because Bush policies are bad for all business, even big business. The broad markets, including the job market, prospered under Clinton. But under Bush-Cheney only energy-related cronies are rewarded, punishing the bulk of the stock market that has moved sideways for five long years. The returns on your 401(k) account are probably only now approaching where they were when Clinton left office.
And yet all these Wall Street donation-bets are hedged if not schizophrenic in their inconsistency. Morgan Stanley's CEO gave to Bush, Santorum, and (ahem) Hillary Clinton. Wall Street loves winners — and that's why they're switching horses.
President Bush, frustrated in efforts to make ex-girlfriend April Foley the head of the Export-Import Bank, has decided to name her as U.S. ambassador to Hungary without formally announcing it.
The top Ex-Im job was vacant for months when the Justice Department took a long look at Foley's financial records. Her proposed nomination is in the hands of the Hungarian government, as was reported by that nation's press.
"Although she is not related to U.S. President George W. Bush, like her immediate predecessor [Amb. George Herbert Walker]," said the Budapest Business Journal, "Foley's appointment would follow a tradition of having a trusted old friend of the Bush family at the helm of the embassy." Bush dated Foley when they both were students at the Harvard Business School.
More about April Foley can be found in the delightful Skimble archives.
