On November 4, financier Steven Rattner published an op-ed in the New York Times headlined “The Warren Way Is the Wrong Way.” An Elizabeth Warren presidency is “a terrifying prospect,” Rattner wrote, for “she would extend the reach and weight of the federal government far further into the economy than anything even President Franklin Roosevelt imagined.” Warren might call herself a capitalist, but her “panoply of minutely detailed plans” shows that she would “turn America’s uniquely successful public-private relationship into a dirigiste, European-style system. If you want to live in France (economically), Elizabeth Warren should be your candidate.” The Times identified Rattner thus: “Steven Rattner, a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration, is a Wall Street executive and a contributing writer.” It did not mention Rattner’s current position: chair and CEO of Willett Advisors, which manages the personal and philanthropic assets of Michael Bloomberg. At the time, Bloomberg was very publicly considering a run for president. With Rattner attacking one of Bloomberg’s rivals, readers deserved to know of his financial relationship to him. (Since November 24, when Bloomberg entered the race, two columns by Rattner have mentioned the Willett connection.) Rattner also appears regularly on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” (and, from time to time, on “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” “All In With Chris Hayes,” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell”). Only recently has Morning Joe begun to mention Rattner’s Bloomberg connections, and then but briefly. On January 28, Rattner went after Bernie Sanders on “Morning Joe.” While Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for All plan had been closely scrutinized, Rattner said, Sanders’s version — though even more expensive — had not. He displayed a chart showing how much federal spending would (by his estimate) increase under each candidate over 10 years: 1.5 percent for Joe Biden, 2 percent for Pete Buttigieg, 12 percent for Warren, and 20 percent for Sanders. No one was discussing this, Rattner complained. The main reason, he ventured, is that Sanders is “like everybody’s eccentric uncle. We all have an eccentric uncle. Not a lot of people thought he was a serious contender for the nomination and so he has not been subjected, I don’t believe, to the same dissection of his plans and policies.” Rattner’s role as Bloomberg’s money manager was fleetingly noted. Yet that description does not begin to capture the depth of the ties between the two men. Bloomberg, in fact, helped rescue Rattner’s career when it was on the verge of collapsing. The two men move in the same ostentatiously wealthy, socially entitled, politically connected circles in New York. While Bloomberg is an overlord in that world, Rattner is a courtier, cultivating rich and powerful people who can help enlarge his own income and influence. He exemplifies the Democratic Party’s capture by a privileged caste divorced from ordinary working people.

Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Steven Rattner attend a gala at Gotham Hall in New York City on April 30, 2007. Photo: Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Image

Raised on Long Island, the son of a paint manufacturer, Rattner attended Brown. After graduating, in 1974, he joined the New York Times. After a stint as a general assignment reporter in New York, he was assigned to the Washington bureau. Focusing on energy and the economy, he got to know some senior Wall Street figures working in the Carter administration. Also in the bureau was Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who was learning the reporting ropes in anticipation of succeeding his father as publisher of the paper; he and Rattner became close. In 1981, Rattner was assigned to the paper’s London bureau. But as his future wife Maureen White later told the Washington Monthly, Rattner was growing tired of writing about people who had more money and power than him but were no smarter or more capable. And so in 1982, Rattner left journalism to work in investment banking: first for Lehman Brothers, then for Morgan Stanley, then for Lazard Frères. At Lazard, he specialized in media mergers and acquisitions, helping to broker some of the largest deals in the industry and earning staggering fees in the process. “The premier investment banker of his generation,” Vanity Fair called him in a 1994 profile that gushed about his polish, focus, judgment, and “gift of expression” — and which caused much envy on Wall Street. Rattner rose to No. 2 at Lazard, but his way to the top was blocked, so in 2000 he and three other Lazard partners left to form Quadrangle, a private equity firm. He convinced friends like Mortimer Zuckerman, Barry Diller, Henry Kravis, and telecom mogul Craig McCaw to invest in the company, and with their money he arranged leveraged buyouts of media companies (another way of saying that he helped promote media concentration). The Grill Room of the Four Seasons, located in the same building as Quadrangle’s office, became Rattner’s cafeteria. In 2008, Michael Bloomberg chose Quadrangle to manage the investments of his fortune. Rattner and his wife magnified their social and political influence by throwing dinner parties in their palatial apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When needing fresh air, they could visit either their horse farm in bucolic North Salem in northern Westchester County, where Bloomberg was a neighbor, or their 15,000-square-foot home in Martha’s Vineyard, where Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast (which owns NBC), lived nearby. They flew to the island in their private jet. Rattner served as the chair of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, the parent of Channel Thirteen, and on the board of the Brookings Institution. Maureen White served as the national finance chair of the Democratic National Committee and was so successful at it that New York magazine called her the “DNC’s ATM.” The couple was close to Chuck Schumer and the Clintons and raised money for Hillary when she ran in 2008, but they moved seamlessly to support Obama when he won the nomination. After Obama’s election, Tim Geithner, his Treasury secretary, recruited Rattner to head the presidential task force on restructuring the auto industry, and in February 2009, he moved to Washington. His efforts to resuscitate GM and Chrysler were controversial; the companies themselves praised his work, but hundreds of car dealerships were eliminated, and thousands of jobs went with them. Nonetheless, there was talk of Rattner getting a more senior post.