This might be the best business meme of 2019 so far. pic.twitter.com/hTXul3Muy3— ArtkoCapital (@ArtkoCapital) March 5, 2019
A Pretty Good Summary of McKinsey
Pete “Sentient Mayonnaise” Buttigieg has just got admonished by the New York Times editorial board for his obfuscation of his time working for the notorious consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
Maybe now we’ll actually get some answers.
We need to get the answer now, because it WILL come out in the general:
Pete Buttigieg worked nearly three years for the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, and he has presented that experience as a kind of capitalist credential — distinguishing him from some rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, and inoculating him against Republican attacks.
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The thing is, Mr. Buttigieg has said precious little about his time at McKinsey. He has not named the clients for whom he worked, nor said much about what he did. He says his lips are sealed by a nondisclosure agreement he signed when he left the firm in 2010 and that he has asked the company to release him from the agreement. It has not yet agreed to do so.
This is not a tenable situation. Mr. Buttigieg owes voters a more complete account of his time at the company. Voters seeking an alternative to Mr. Trump should demand that candidates not only reject Mr. Trump’s positions, but also his behavior — including his refusal to share information about his health and his business dealings. This standard requires Mr. Buttigieg to talk about his time at McKinsey. It similarly requires Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders to stop dragging their feet and release their health records to the public.
In Mr. Buttigieg’s case, the most straightforward solution is for McKinsey to release him from his vows of silence — or at least to substitute a significantly more permissive agreement.
The obligation to provide more information, however, ultimately falls on Mr. Buttigieg. He must find a way to give voters a more complete accounting of his time at the company.
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He has not offered the kind of details necessary to take the measure of that account.
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And working at McKinsey is not quite the résumé booster it used to be.
The Times reported this week that the consulting firm has advised the Trump administration on the logistics of its cruel crackdown on immigration. McKinsey also has offered its services as a consultant to brutal and corrupt governments and state-owned enterprises in other countries, including China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Buttigieg has criticized the company, and cast the troubles as largely postdating his tenure. “As somebody who left the firm a decade ago, seeing what certain people in that firm have decided to do is extremely frustrating and extremely disappointing,” he told CNN.
But that’s an incomplete answer. Mr. Buttigieg needs to explain what he did at McKinsey.
This is significant because it’s clear that Buttigieg, and McKinsey, have tried very, very hard to conceal whatever Mayor Pete was involved with during this time.
Whatever the reality is, you can be sure that it’s juicy, or at least sleazy, because Sleazy is how McKinsey rolls.
In any case, if it were something good, Mayor Mayo and McKinsey would be shouting it from the heavens.