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W. Michael Blumenthal - Wikipedia

Werner Michael Blumenthal (born January 3, 1926) is a German-American business leader, economist and political adviser who served as United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1979. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Michae…

At age thirteen, Blumenthal barely escaped Nazi Germany with his Jewish family in 1939. He was forced to spend World War II living in the ghetto of Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China, until 1947.

As a member of the Carter administration, Blumenthal helped guide economic policy

and took part in re establishing ties with China. After Blumenthal resigned, he became chairman and CEO of Burroughs Corporation and Unisys, followed by seventeen years as director of the restored Jewish Museum in Berlin.

In 1961, having by then been a registered Democrat,

Blumenthal moved to Washington, D.C. following John F. Kennedy's inauguration, where he was offered a position by diplomat, George Ball, to serve as Kennedy's deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs.

During 1945, George Ball began collaboration with

Jean Monnet and the French government in its economic recovery in its negotiations regarding the Marshall Plan.

Jean Monnet has been called "The Father of Europe" by those who see his innovative and pioneering efforts in the 1950s as the key to establishing the

European Coal and Steel Community, the predecessor of today's European Union.

In 1925, Monnet moved to America to accept a partnership in Blair & Co., a New York bank which merged with Bank of America in 1929, forming Bancamerica-Blair Corporation which was owned by

Transamerica Corporation.

In October 1904, A.P. Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco. In October 1928, Giannini created a holding company that he named the Trans-America Corporation, which owned Bank of America, Bank of Italy, Bancitaly Corporation,

National Bankitaly Company, California Joint Stock Land Bank, and Banca d'America e d'Italia.

During World War II, A. P. Giannini bankrolled industrialist Henry Kaiser and his enterprises supporting the war effort. After the war, he visited Italy and arranged for loans to help

rebuild the war-torn Fiat factories. Giannini also provided capital to William Hewlett and David Packard to help form Hewlett-Packard.

Mike Blumenthal accepted the position and served in the State Department from 1961 until 1967 as an adviser on trade to Kennedy and, after

Kennedy's assassination, as an adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson.
Johnson made him U.S. Ambassador and chief U. S. negotiator at the Kennedy Round General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks in Geneva, considered to be one of the world's most significant multilateral trade

negotiation.

The Kennedy Round notably also pioneered a "linear" style of negotiations. In contrast to the item-by-item negotiations of previous GATT rounds, many countries offered across-the-board cuts of a certain percentage on all tariffs of participating countries. Members

of the so-called "Bridge Club"—the United States, European Economic Community, Japan, and the UK—led the negotiations and offered linear cuts.

In 1967, Blumenthal left government to join Bendix International.

In 1942 Ernest R. Breech became president of Bendix, moving from

General Motors. After performing brilliantly for Bendix by introducing GM management philosophies, he attracted the attention of Henry Ford II who persuaded Breech to move to Ford where he finished his career.

While Blumenthal headed Bendix, newly elected President Carter

nominated him to become his U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, a position in which he served from January 23, 1977 to August 4, 1979. Cyrus Vance had originally wanted him to be his deputy when he became Carter's Secretary of State, but Carter decided he would be better placed as

Secretary of the Treasury.

Vance was the cousin (and adoptive son) of John W. Davis.

Davis was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Crusaders, an influential organization that promoted the repeal of Prohibition. He was the founding president of the Council on

Foreign Relations, formed in 1921, chairman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1922 to 1939.

In February 1979, Mike Blumenthal represented the U.S. in its first visit to China by an American Cabinet officer

following America's official recognition of their Communist government, which China had proclaimed in 1949.

Blumenthal used part of his speech, much of which he gave speaking in Chinese, to convey to Chinese leaders America's serious concern with China's invasion of Vietnam a

week earlier. Henry Kissinger described the multipronged invasion which may have included up to 400,000 Chinese soldiers. Blumenthal asked them to withdraw their troops "as quickly as possible," since it carried the "risk of wider wars."

After resigning Blumenthal joined

Burroughs Corporation in 1980 as vice chairman, then chairman of the board a year later. After merging the company with Sperry Corporation, it became Unisys Corporation in 1986, with Blumenthal its chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). He remained with Unisys until 1990

when he stepped down after several years of losses to become a limited partner at Lazard Freres & Company, an investment bank located in New York.

Lazard's New York City headquarters spans the top floors of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, including what used to be Room 5600, the former

offices of the Rockefeller family dynasty.

George Blumenthal (April 7, 1858 – June 26, 1941) was a German-born banker who served as the head of the U.S branch of Lazard Frères.

Blumenthal a foreign-exchange banker was sent to the United States by Speyer & Co., and rose to

prominence as the head of the U.S branch of Lazard Frères.

In 1898, Blumenthal was married to Florence Meyer (1873–1930), a daughter of Marc Eugene Meyer and sister of Eugene Isaac Meyer.

Knollwood Club is an Adirondack Great Camp on Shingle Bay, Lower Saranac Lake, near the village of Saranac Lake, New York, USA.

The camp was built for six friends: Elias Asiel (Asiel & Co.), George Blumenthal (Lazard Freres), Max Nathan, Abram M. Stein, Daniel Guggenheim

(American Smelting and Refining), and Louis Marshall.

The choice of Lower Saranac Lake as the site was determined in part by the growing anti-Semitism in America in that period. In 1877, Joseph Seligman was involved in the most publicized anti-Semitic incident in American

history up to that point, being denied entry into the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, despite having been a regular guest previously. William West Durant owned much of the land bordering the Saranac Lakes, and was more than willing to sell to any and all buyers.

William West Durant was the son of Thomas C. Durant, the financier and railroad promoter who was behind the Crédit Mobilier scandal.

While working to complete the eastern half of the First transcontinental railroad in 1869 as vice-president of the Union Pacific,

Dr. Thomas C. Durant formed the Adirondack Company in 1863, accumulating half a million acres of land at State auctions for five cents an acre.

The Adirondack Railway (originally Adirondack Company) was a railroad that connected Saratoga Springs to North Creek, New York, a

distance of 62 miles. Built by Dr. Thomas Clark Durant, vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad, it was started in 1864 and completed in 1871. After Durant's death, it was taken over by his son, William West Durant, who sold it to the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company in

1889.

To get the anthracite from the William Wurts' mine in the Moosic Mountains near Carbondale to the canal at Honesdale, the canal company built the Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad.

Geologically, the largest most concentrated anthracite deposit in the world is found in

the Lackawanna Coal Mine in northeastern Pennsylvania, United States in and around Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum was featured on The Office episode "The Merger" in Michael and Dwight's parody of Lazy Sunday.

Brent Forrester, the son of

physician James S. Forrester, grew up as a surfer in Malibu, California. As an undergraduate John Jay Scholar at Columbia University he worked on the university's student TV station, and returned to Los Angeles to begin a career as a TV writer.

Forrester served as a writer and

consulting producer on The Office. He has written seven episodes of the show including "The Merger" and "Business School" and directed the episode "Casual Friday".

In 2019–2020 Forrester is executive producer of Space Force directed by Greg Daniels and starring Steve Carell.

Greg Daniels attended Harvard University, where he befriended and began collaborating with Conan O'Brien.

During his sophomore and junior years, Conan O'Brien served as the Lampoon's president. At this time, O'Brien's future boss at NBC, Jeff Zucker, was serving as president

of the school newspaper The Harvard Crimson.

Late Night with Conan O'Brien, originating from Studio 6A at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, premiered on September 13, 1993.

During the war, the RCA Building's Room 3603 became the primary location of the U.S. operations of

British Intelligence's British Security Co-ordination, organized by William Stephenson. It also served as the office of Allen Dulles, who later headed the Central Intelligence Agency.

Conaco, LLC is the television production firm owned by entertainer Conan O'Brien. The name is a

portmanteau of the words "Conan" and "Co".

David Kissinger, former NBCU executive and the son of Henry Kissinger, has been president since 2005.