Hey, isn’t that … a veritable Goldman-Sachs reunion on Tuesday night at the Four Seasons hotel bar? The financial giant’s chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, caught up over cocktails with two alums of the company who moved on to Donald Trump’s White House — chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, and senior economic adviser Dina Powell.
The trio chatted as they sipped their drinks in the back seating area of the Bourbon Steak bar, says our spy, who overheard snippets of the conversation. Talk ranged from family to name-dropping (Blankfein could be heard starting a sentence with “So I told Mnuchin …”) to the differences between Manhattan and Washington. Cohn at one point described how he and his wife had recently gotten into a car or taxi and when the driver asked “where to?” his wife quipped, “New York.”
Another funny moment, per the fellow barfly, came when the check arrived — Cohn and Blankfein pulled out American Express credit cards to split the tab; Cohn’s was the most-prestigious black version, while Blankfein’s was a mere gold-level.
The difference wasn’t lost on Cohn, who ribbed his former boss. “Should I sell my stock, Lloyd?” he asked, appearing mock-concerned about the wall Street titan’s financial straits.
To which Blankfein protested (and let’s remember for a moment that the guy’s an actual billionaire) that the fees for black-level status were just too steep: “I’m not paying $500 for that,” he said.