"Obama shows hints of his year in global finance; Tied markets to social aid" by Sasha Issenberg, Globe Staff | August 6, 2008
WASHINGTON - Obama rarely talks about his year spent within the arcane sphere of global finance as a junior editor for Business International Corp., a publisher based in New York.
Founded in 1954 to publish a magazine targeted at an increasingly globalized managerial class, Business International covered a broad array of subjects, including reports on economic policy making and recommendations for executive insurance policies.
The flagship publication had an activist bent, as an early champion of corporate social responsibility. A 1983 "call for action" encouraged multinational companies to push not only for lower corporate taxes in the countries in which they operated but also reduced weapons spending, as a means to promote "peace through greater global understanding and economic integration."
But the publications for which Obama worked had far narrower interests. Written for bankers and financial executives, Business International's money report delivered practical, if often rarefied, advice for eluding foreign-exchange rules that often limited the ability of investors to efficiently control their assets.
Susan Arterian Chang, a writer who worked alongside Obama:
"They were boosters for multinationals and they thought globalism was the way we should be going."
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