Climate-change activist and major Democratic campaign donor Tom Steyer apparently had a meeting with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and White House aides Valerie Jarrett, John Podesta, and Jason Furman. The Washington Free Beacon has published Lew's briefing memo for the meeting, which the Treasury Department had to be sued to disclose.
To me one interesting aspect was the involvement at the meeting of "Trevor Houser, Partner at the Rhodium Group (RHG) and Visiting Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics" and of Henry Cisneros, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development who is now founder and chairman of CityView Capital.
CityView's website says its "investors include some of the largest and most sophisticated public pension plans and financial institutions: the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA), the Los Angeles Fire and Police Plan (LAFPP), the Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois, the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund."
Rhodium Group's website explains:
RHG's energy and natural resources team, led by Trevor Houser, brings together energy and environmental policy experience, economic and commodity market modeling expertise, and region and industry-specific insight to help clients anticipate, understand and respond to disruptive energy and natural resource trends. Our coverage includes global oil, gas, coal and agricultural markets, US power and natural gas, emerging Asian energy and base metals supply/demand forecasting, and national and international energy and environmental policy assessment.
RHG retainer clients receive regular market-oriented research on all RHG coverage areas including energy and natural resources, and direct interaction with Trevor and his team. Clients seeking support for specific energy and natural resources-related business decisions, strategic planning processes or policy deliberations can engage RHG on a special project basis.
In other words, these guys are businessmen. Nothing wrong with that. But worth noting nonetheless.