Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Meet the Four Jews Shaping the U.S. Economy

This could sound like yet another bad-taste Oscar night joke, but turns out that the U.S. economy is run by Jews.

Well, at least the federal government’s top advisers.

On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Jack Lew, an Orthodox Jew, as Treasury Secretary. He will joined by Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council at the White House, Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Jeffrey Zients, who heads the Office of Management and Budget. All are Members of the Tribe.

With Lew’s confirmation as Treasury Secretary, he is officially no longer the White House chief of staff. But the Jewish community, a former official with the administration assured, will not lose access. His replacement, Dennis McDonough may be Catholic, but he still has a soft spot for Jewish activists. During his tenure as deputy national security adviser, McDonough launched a tradition of monthly conference calls with Jewish leaders for updates on international issues and was known to meet with almost every major Jewish federation delegation that came to Washington.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.