Yes, A Private Wealth Manager Now Runs the National Park Service
If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like to run the Park Service like a hedge fund, you may be about to find out.
If irony had a national monument this would be it. The man now running America’s parks has never managed a trail crew. He has never overseen a wildlife refuge. He has never fought for a single acre of wilderness or spent a season in the field with the people who do.
What he has done reads like an Onion article, but alas, this is the world we live in. If your dream candidate to oversee America’s most treasured landscapes is a veteran of private wealth management, congratulations – your moment has arrived. The Trump administration has handed 84 million acres of public land to a former Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley executive who knows exactly how to do what bankers do best: figure out how much of it can be monetized.
The choice of a banker to run the National Park Service is only the latest and perhaps most brazen example of the ongoing push to privatize our public lands into oblivion. You don’t pick a banker to save the parks. You pick a banker because you want to put them on the books…
