Huffington Post is reporting the leading candidate for Obama's Economic council chief, made millions from Wall Street, significant consulting fees from Goldman Sachs, while we experienced economic Armageddon.

Gene Sperling, a leading contender for a top economic post in the White House, made millions on Wall Street even as the economy faltered.

The adviser to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is near the top of President Barack Obama's list of candidates to replace Larry Summers as director of the National Economic Council, HuffPost reports. By appointing Sperling, the president would fuel perceptions that his administration is overly close to Wall Street, installing a policymaker who has not only overseen monumental deregulation of the financial sector, but has also collected hefty paychecks from its leading firms.

The next NEC director will help determine the administration's economic policy over the next two years. Summers, who last week left his White House post for a Harvard professorship, met with the president almost daily to discuss economic decisions. Long sympathetic to Wall Street interests, Summers pushed for deregulation of financial instruments under President Clinton, a policy that experts -- and Clinton himself -- now say was misguided, contributing to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Even worse, Sperling is a Rubinite. This is the same bad trade deals, the same lack of financial regulation which has lead us to where we are today. With anemic economic growth, no jobs and an unemployment rate that just isn't dropping.

Here is the 2009 Bloomberg article listing the Wall Street connections and payouts for people now working at the Treasury.