Why Trump keeps hiring Goldman Sachs bankers

Unlike Paulson or the other Goldman execs who went on to head the NEC, Cohn never made it to the top. Indeed, one of the strange features of the past several years has been a certain stasis at the head of America’s largest financial institutions. Jamie Dimon has been running JPMorgan Chase for 12 years, through crisis, cancer, and a mammoth list of fines, yet shows no signs of giving up. Brian Moynihan is completing his sixth year as CEO as Bank of America. And Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, is now entering his second decade in the role.

One could have imagined Blankfein taking a job in the Clinton administration. (His beard, self-deprecation, and liberal social views mark him as a Democrat.) But the results of the November election foreclosed that option. For an ambitious heir apparent at Goldman, which Cohn has been for the past several years, the only way up is out.

Like many of those who thrive at Goldman, Cohn is affable in public; hard-driving, tough, borderline-arrogant in private; political but not particularly ideological. A graduate of American University, Cohn is a little bit like the less-charismatic, brawnier younger brother to Blankfein.

Cohn made and left his mark first as a trader, and then as the chief operating officer, making sure the highly functional bureaucracy of the global banking giant runs efficiently and managing internal rivalries—not as a big-picture strategist or the public face of the firm.

Some of the early buzz surrounding Cohn was that he was to be considered for the Office of Management and Budget, which is an important operational job—one has to manage a large staff, the production of key documents, and the nasty negotiations surrounding budgets. OMB directors spend a lot of time in the weeds.