2020 presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg released a list of his clients at McKinsey & Company on Tuesday night after critics pushed him for transparency on his work at the international consulting firm.
I don’t see anything nefarious here. It means that Buttigeig is decently-informed on the issue, even if perhaps somewhat out of date and from a particular point of view. (And in corporate terms a couple years can be a long time, especially if it includes a major policy transition.)
When MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow asked Buttigieg on Tuesday whether his work at McKinsey had led to the layoffs, the candidate responded, “I doubt it.”
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I’d be more likely to credit this perspective if a) Buttigieg hadn’t stalled and obfuscated on this and similar points for so long, and b) I didn’t know how long it often takes giant organizations like BCBS to actually implement decisions based on a consultant’s report. A couple of years is absolutely not outside the realm of possibility here.
Wow we are digging the bottom of the barrel to find something on this guy.
Have you guys seen the several examples of him being very rude and dismissive to people who want to know about his private fundraisers?
He acts more like a CEO than someone trying to win a vote.
Yeah, um, that’s what primary season is for. Dredge up everything. Decide what we will and will not accept. And hopefully immunize the eventual nominee from having these things used against them in the general.
If this is as minor as you say, then Buttigieg should have no problem being transparent about it and swatting the whole issue away.
Many companies respond to a recession by trying to reduce costs [layoffs in the case of BCBS-MI] and increase revenues [premium increases]. Decisions like that aren’t made based on a two-year-old analysis by a consulting firm.
Why does that matter? If Medicare for All goes through a whole lot of layoffs are going to take place at insurance companies.
Did some of the data and reports he produced get used by BCBS in their layoff process? Sure. That’s what you do with the reports produced by a 20-something management consultant (or if you want to hire people, you cherry-pick a different set of statements from their pile of paper). My point is that he wasn’t a decision-maker or even a serious advisor (having known people employed as consultants and analysts and suchlike in their 20s). You can fault him for having spent some time working as highly profitable window dressing, but that’s a venial sin. Consider the “reasonable republican” alternative like Mitt, who directly oversaw leveraging and “right-sizing” companies into chapter 11 while issuing eight-figure special dividends off the top to himself and his associates.
Actually, it would be. Cost cutting at insurance firms isn’t rocket science.
No, he had to clear this up, because that company has a history of nefarious connections with Enron, the Saudis, Erdogan, insider trading and more. It’s a huge list. It was important for Buttigieg to show that he hadn’t done any work for those particular clients. Check out this Wiki link if you’re interested:
This is pretty close to the most meaningless “scandal” ever.
Yeah, it really is. It’s an insurance company, not a manufacturer. There isn’t a lot of concern about spinning down a factory or finishing a production run or R&D project. Having worked at similar orgs—and with friends who were at BCBS at the time—there’s not a lot needed beyond ‘ok, let’s figure out how many people we need working on X paperwork and how much of a slowdown we can tolerate’, and then boom. 3-6 months is a much more normal time-frame.
It’s one thing to ask if Buttigieg was responsible for establishing goals or making recommendations for BC/BS but, that was not his job.
BC/BS was going to crunch these numbers one way or another. If they didn’t use McKenzie, they’d have used another firm.
This attempt to suggest causality to someone who did grunt work on the project (TWO YEARS PRIOR) is not constructive. It misinforms.
What else happened between 2007 and 2009? I just can’t put my finger on it.
Good grief it was two later and even if it wasn’t Pete didn’t fire them nor does the article say recommended laying off people.
I disagree. Read that link I posted above about what McKinsey has been involved in, over the years. He has now showed that his client list is “clean,” but he will be asked why he decided to work for a company known to be involved with bad actors worldwide.
Actually, he’s already been asked about it. I remember an interview he did on NPR something like 6 or 8 months ago, where he was asked that question. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like he wasn’t involved in the foreign client work and felt it was a good learning experience. Which is fine, and frankly I think he has more serious baggage to overcome than McKinsey in getting the nomination. But the issue isn’t going to completely disappear because it’s part of his history.
He did last night on TRMS. See MSNBC.com video.
Correct, he needed to come clean and he has now that the company released him from his non-disclosure agreement. This company has had questionable clients and Buttigieg spoke to that last night on TRMS. The clips of him are still up over at MSNBC.com.