Former Senator Judd Gregg to Join Goldman Sachs

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It's been a good month for government regulators going to join the companies they regulate. On May 11, Comcast announced Meredith Baker would leave the FCC to join its board, after she approved its merger with NBC Universal a few months earlier. Today, the news is about Judd Gregg, the former three-term Republican senator from New Hampshire, who is going to work for Goldman Sachs.

Gregg, who also put in a couple of terms as the governor of New Hampshire, was the top Republican on the Senate Banking Housing and Urban Affairs Committee before he decided not to run for re-election in 2010. Gregg will be joining Goldman as an "international adviser," which means he will "provide strategic advice to the firm and its clients, and assist in business development initiatives across our global franchise," according to their press release.

Gregg has already shown he was a friend to big banks like Goldman. In 2009, he argued against a proposed federal breakup of Goldman, saying in a Bloomberg interview, "Big is not necessarily bad.... If an entity is properly capitalized and if it does decent underwriting, big can work to the advantage of this country." And in 2010, he cautioned against populism as senate Democrats sought to overhaul financial regulations: "The problem we have is that there is this populist fervor, this Huey Long attitude out there that says all banks are bad and that the financial system is evil and as a result we must do things which will basically end up reducing our competitiveness as a nation." He should fit right in.