Word: neill
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...After departed Treasury hero Robert Rubin set the recent standard for departmental conflict-of-interest-avoidance when he cut his financial ties to his former firm Goldman Sachs, and Dick Cheney - after a bit of hedging - did the same with his Halliburton holdings, the already iconoclastic O'Neill was starting to give his boss headaches. (Perhaps the final straw was when the Democratic National Committee's web site kicked off a "O'Neill/Alcoa Stock Tracker" last week...
...Neill had tried to keep the watchdogs at bay by promising to recuse himself - as per the letter of the law - from all Treasury matters pertaining to the aluminum manufacturer. But with Alcoa operating in 30 countries, with annual sales of $23 billion - and Bush, who's already under plenty of fire for his administration's coziness to Big Business, involving O'Neill in almost "every issue that the government is involved in" - it was time for O'Neill to finally clear his desk...
...comparison with Rubin on divestiture is not the only one O'Neill is up against. Apart from understanding markets, Rubin had perfect pitch when it came to the political ramifications of Treasury decisions - and of course there's the matter of being the executive-branch helmsman of an unprecedented economic boom. So far, O'Neill seems a bit more tone-deaf, especially when it comes to the jittery nerves of the bond markets, and this is in a Republican administration, where the Treasury head is usually the Big Man on Campus...
...Neill's holdings - in the neighborhood of 2.4 million shares of Alcoa stock and 3.8 million options to purchase same, as of the end of last year - will be converted into "index funds that are not subject to any question," he said. Asked when the sale would take place, O'Neill replied that "the financial people that take care of these kinds of things will pace it and figure out how to do it." Presumably he means the guys with the glowing green screens...
...Presumably this will free up O'Neill to think about more mundane matters like, say, the ailing U.S. economy, the looming Japanese meltdown and the fate of his boss' tax cut on Capitol Hill...