Peter George Peterson (born June 5, 1926) is an American businessman, investment banker, fiscal conservative, author, and politician whose most prominent political position was as United States Secretary of Commerce from February 29, 1972 to February 1, 1973. He was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations until retiring on June 30, 2007, after being named chairman emeritus. He is the Senior Chairman of the private equity firm, the Blackstone Group. In 2008, he was ranked 149th on the "Forbes 400 Richest Americans" with a net worth of $2.8 Billion. In 2008, he established The Peter G. Peterson Foundation with a $1 billion endowment.
Biography
Peterson was born in Kearney, Nebraska, to Greek immigrant parents and is married to Joan Ganz Cooney. He reached draft age in June 1944 but avoided military service in World War II and in the Korean War. He received an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University, graduating in 1947, summa cum laude. He joined Market Facts, a Chicago-based market research firm, in 1948.In 1951, he received an MBA degree from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, before returning to Market Facts as an executive vice president.
He joined advertising agency McCann Erickson in 1953, again in Chicago, where he served as a director. He joined movie-equipment maker Bell and Howell Corporation in 1958 as Executive Vice President. He later succeeded Charles H. Percy as Chairman and CEO, positions he held from 1963 to 1971. He has been a director of a number of other corporations.
In 1969, Peterson was invited by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller 3rd, CFR Chairman John J. McCloy, and former Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon to chair a Commission on Foundations and Private Philanthropy, which became known as the Peterson Commission. Among its recommendations adopted by the government were that foundations be required annually to disburse a minimum proportion of their funds.
In 1971, Peterson was named Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs by U.S. President Richard Nixon. In 1972, he became the Secretary of Commerce, a position he held for one year. At that time he also assumed the Chairmanship of President Nixon’s National Commission on Productivity and was appointed U.S. Chairman of the U.S.–Soviet Commercial Commission.
Peterson was Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers (1973–1977) and Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. (1977–1984).
In 1985, Peter G Peterson co-founded the prominent private equity and investment management firm, the Blackstone Group, for which his current position is Senior Chairman.
In 1992, Peterson was one of the co-founders of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan citizens' group that advocates reduction of the federal budget deficit. Following record deficits under President George W. Bush, Peterson commented in 2004: "I remain a Republican, but the Republicans have become a far more theological, faith-directed party, not troubling with evidence."
In February 1994, President Bill Clinton named Peterson as a member of the Bi-Partisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform co-chaired by Senators Bob Kerrey and John Danforth.
Peterson also serves as Co-Chair of The Conference Board Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprises (Co-Chaired by John Snow).
Peterson has been Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1985, when he took over from David Rockefeller. He also serves as Trustee of the Rockefeller family's Japan Society and the Museum of Modern Art, and was previously on the board of Rockefeller Center Properties, Inc..
He is founding Chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (formerly the Institute for International Economics, renamed in his honour in 2006), and a Trustee of the Committee for Economic Development. He was also Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York between 2000 and 2004.
In 2006 Peterson was honored with the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution.
2012, May ...and there are no comments? How can that be? For all your dedication to this country and for all your manifold accomplishments at all levels, this county is in your debt. We who have moved into the land of the independents along the path of Susan Eisenhower now call on you to join us, acknowledging that it is from this position you can best assert your on-going patriotism to our country and your desire to see it heal from its brush with too narrow a theology that has left the Republican party no longer able to provide a viable path forward in regaining our future where by mid-century we may once again reach a time like the Spring of 2001 when serious debate was going on about what our country would be by 2008 or 2009 when our national debt had reached its practical minimum. Once again your country faces a grave crisis, and we desperately need to regain our footing, and return to a sanity based on a practical consideration of our circumstances and not on theology. In the words of John Dickinson at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, "Experience must be our only guide." Your voice and your embrace of our country in this fashion was never more needed. With greatest respect, I remain sincerely yours.
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