Penny Pritzker

Penny Pritzker    ( billionaire,  businesswoman,  deep state actor?)
Born	Penny Sue Pritzker 2 May 1959  Chicago,  Illinois,  U.S.
Nationality	USA
Alma mater	•  Harvard University •  Stanford University
Religion	Jew
Children	2
Spouse	Bryan Traubert
Member of	Aspen/Strategy Group, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Council on Foreign Relations/Members 3, Harvard/Corporation, Obama Foundation, President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Pritzker family
Party	Democratic
Pritzker family billionaire who advanced career of Barack Obama early. Carnegie Endowment chairperson.  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace/Chairperson In office February 2018 - Present  United States Secretary of Commerce In office June 26, 2013 - January 20, 2017

Penny Sue Pritzker is an Jewish-American billionaire businesswoman and member of one of the richest families in the country. Her family early identified and furthered the political career of a young Barack Obama. Pritzker was also United States Secretary of Commerce. during the Obama administration.

In February 2018, Pritzker was elected to succeed Harvey V. Fineberg as chairperson of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, taking effect May 2018.

Background

Penny Pritzker is the daughter of Sue (née Sandel) and Donald Pritzker, a member of the Pritzker family of Chicago, a wealthy and influential, but obsessively private, business family, worth $15 billion. Her grandfather Abram Nicholas Pritzker started the family fortune, officially through a series of successful leveraged buyout real estate investments in Prohibition-era Chicago. Her father, Donald, helped in establishing the chain of Hyatt Hotels.

The family fortune was held in a vast network of domestic and foreign trusts designed to minimize, if not eliminate, taxes, intended to grow and be handed down from one generation to the next. The funds had generous grandfather clauses (i.e. the tax dodge is not available for new users) that protect assets accumulating in offshore accounts.

Dennis Bernstein wrote in 2013: "The Pritzkers are like America’s Rothschilds", noting "they managed to build and pass along … Brobdingnagian wealth from one generation to the next and the next." A series of inheritance lawsuit in the early 2000s split up the fortune somewhat. In the process she became estranged from her two brothers.

Penny Pritzker's brother, J. B. Pritzker, became Governor of Illinois in 2019. Her sibling Jennifer Pritzker is a major champion of transexual causes.

She is the founder of PSP Capital Partners and Pritzker Realty Group. She is also co-founder of Artemis Real Estate Partners.

In 2012, Chicago magazine named her one of the 100 most powerful Chicagoans. In October 2015, Forbes estimated her net worth at US $2.4 billion. In 2009, Forbes named Pritzker one of the 100 most powerful women in the world.

Pritzker and Obama

Pritzker's patronage of Barack Obama and his family dates back to the 1990s when he was a professor at the University of Chicago. Obama and his family were frequent guests at Pritzker's Lake Michigan vacation home.

Greg Palast wrote that "In 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago. Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust – at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior’s depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama’s South Side district lost their homes. Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap."

Pritzker continued aiding Obama's political career, helping to finance his 2004 Senate campaign. Early in the Democratic presidential primary, Pritzker's money helped Obama's candidacy survive when Obama was trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls. Pritzker introduced Obama, the new state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (very rich women) on Chicago’s Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and importantly – an introduction to Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank.

Pritzker was the national finance chair of Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent. She hosted lavish fundraisers as part of her effort to raise money.

Following Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election, CNN reported that Pritzker was president-elect Obama's top choice for Commerce Secretary. However, Pritzker took herself out of the running. According to the Chicago Tribune, she withdrew her name from consideration "due to obligations to her family, for whom she was still overseeing billions in assets, and the financial crisis, which was putting some of those assets at risk".

Pritzker was a member of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. She also was on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Although she was less active in the 2012 Obama campaign than she had been four years prior, she was national co-chair of Obama for America 2012. She was also on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations,deciding the direction of US foreign policy.

Secretary of Commerce

Pritzker with President Barack Obama and Mike Froman in the Oval Office, May 2, 2013

Pritzker was nominated as United States Secretary of Commerce by President Barack Obama on May 2, 2013. To avoid conflicts of interest, Pritzker agreed to sell her interest in at least 221 companies and resign from 158 entities, including the Hyatt Board of Directors and the Chicago Board of Education. In November 2017, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism released the "Paradise Papers," documents related to offshore services and tax havens, and alleged that Pritzker transferred her shares of two of her holdings to her children rather than selling them, as she had indicated on ethics forms. Pritzker responded with a statement saying that she had complied with the rules and regulations. Pritzker was sworn in as Secretary on June 26, 2013.

Among Pritzker's priorities was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed trade agreement that would have been the "largest regional trade agreement in history". Pritzker supported the TPP as a way to provide market access to U.S. businesses and as a way for the U.S. to set the standards for trade. Leading up the 2016 presidential election, in which both major party candidates openly opposed the TPP, Pritzker and other Obama officials continued to push for the TPP's passage in Congress. Ultimately, Congress failed to pass the TPP bill.

Pritzker named a Digital Economy Board of Advisors, which included tech industry CEOs and academics, to advise on policy. Pritzker also expanded the IP attache program, which helps the tech industry protect their intellectual property abroad. As secretary, Pritzker also created the Commerce Data Advisory Council to identify priorities for the Department of Commerce, a prolific publisher of data intended to allow businesses to plan and innovate. Pritzker was the lead negotiator for the United States in the E.U.–U.S. Privacy Shield, an agreement governing how companies transfer digital data from Europe to the United States.

Following President Obama's announcement that the United States would move towards normalizing relations with Cuba, Pritzker traveled to Cuba. Although Obama's change in policy did not end the U.S. trade embargo, since ending the embargo required an act of Congress, Pritzker met with Cuban trade ministers and other officials to discuss the changing relationship between the two countries and to lay the groundwork for more economic involvement.

Following her tenure as Secretary, Pritzker returned to PSP and the private sector.

Civic and philanthropic activities

Pritzker is involved in public education. She was a member of the Chicago Board of Education and is past chair of the Chicago Public Education Fund. Pritzker was elected to a six-year term on the Harvard Board of Overseers in 2002. In 2018, she was elected to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, which oversees Harvard University. Pritzker was Advisory Board Chair of Skills for America's Future (SAF), a policy initiative of the Aspen Institute. Pritzker is a former chair of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Pritzker and her husband, Bryan Traubert, have their own foundation called the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation. The foundation focuses on physical activity for young people and increasing economic opportunity in Chicago.

In February 2018, Pritzker was elected to succeed Harvey V. Fineberg as chairperson of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, taking effect May 2018.

In March 2020, Pritzer set up the Illinois COVID-19 Response Fund, to assist non-profit organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic, after receiving a call from her brother, Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker. The siblings announced the creation of the fund with $23 million in start up money on March 24, 2020, six days after Governor Pritzker's request. Pritzker and her husband contributed $1.5 million of the initial sum.

External links

• The Invisibility of U.S. Oligarchs: The Case of Penny Pritzker - Sam Husseini blog. April 2016

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Barack Obama/Presidency	20 January 2009	20 January 2017		The Barack Obama administration
Halifax International Security Forum/2023	17 November 2023	19 November 2023	Canada Halifax Nova Scotia	Spooky conference in Canada in November 2023
Munich Security Conference/2024	16 February 2024	18 February 2024	Germany Munich Bavaria	Annual conference of mid-level functionaries from the military-industrial complex - politicians, propagandists and lobbyists - in their own bubble, far from the concerns of their subjects
WEF/Annual Meeting/2012	25 January 2012	29 January 2012	Switzerland WEF	2113 guests in Davos
WEF/Annual Meeting/2013	23 January 2013	27 January 2013	Switzerland WEF	2500 mostly unelected leaders met to discuss "leading through adversity"
WEF/Annual Meeting/2014	22 January 2014	25 January 2014	Switzerland WEF	2603 guests in Davos considered "Reshaping The World"
WEF/Annual Meeting/2015	21 January 2015	24 January 2015	Switzerland WEF	Attended by a lot of people. This page lists only the 261 "Public Figures".
WEF/Annual Meeting/2016	20 January 2016	23 January 2016	Switzerland WEF	Attended by over 2500 people, both leaders and followers, who were explained how the Fourth Industrial Revolution would changed everything, including being a "revolution of values".
WEF/Annual Meeting/2019	22 January 2019	25 January 2019	Switzerland WEF	"The reality is that we are in a Cold War [against China] that threatens to turn into a hot one."
WEF/Annual Meeting/2020	21 January 2020	24 January 2020	Switzerland WEF	This mega-summit of the world's ruling class and their political and media appendages happens every year, but 2020 was special, as the continuous corporate media coverage of COVID-19 started more or less from one day to the next on 20/21 January 2020, coinciding with the start of the meeting.
WEF/Annual Meeting/2024	15 January 2024	19 January 2024	Switzerland WEF	The theme for the invited "stakeholders" was "rebuilding trust in the international system". Who exactly were are to trust remains a secret, as 95% of the participants were not disclosed.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.