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Likely new White House chief of staff has bided time at Morgan Chase

Section: Daily Dispatches

It's like he never left the government. ...

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Obama Said to Consider William Daley for Top White House Post

By Julianna Goldman and John McCormick
Bloomberg News
Monday, January 3, 2010

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-03/obama-said-to-consider-william-...

President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. commerce secretary, to a high-level White House post, possibly as his chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.

Such a move, which is still under discussion and which White House officials wouldn't confirm, would bring a Washington veteran -- and someone with strong business ties -- into the administration as Obama enters the second half of his term. The president is faced with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and is trying to accelerate the U.S. economic recovery while addressing the budget deficit.

Daley, 62, who typically responds to questions, didn't return two messages seeking comment left on his cell phone yesterday or a phone call to his office and an e-mail sent to him today. White House officials declined to discuss the matter.

"I'm not going to comment on personnel speculation," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in an e-mail.

... Dispatch continues below ...



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Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property

Company Press Release, October 27, 2010

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:

-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.

-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.

-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.

Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.

"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."

For the company's full press release, please visit:

http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf



As he remakes his staff at the midway point of his presidency, Obama also is seeking to address complaints from some executives that the Democratic administration is anti- business. Daley is JPMorgan's Midwest chairman and the bank's head of corporate responsibility.

Among the pressing personnel decisions Obama must make is naming a successor to Lawrence Summers as head of the National Economic Council, which could come as early as this week. Gene Sperling, a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, has emerged as the leading candidate for the post.

If selected, Sperling would be returning to the position he held for four years under President Bill Clinton, making him the longest-serving NEC director. While he doesn't have strong ties to the business community or Summers' standing as an economist, Sperling has played key roles crafting the administration’s economic policies, most recently in forging Obama's compromise with Republican leaders to extend Bush-era income tax cuts.

Yale University President Richard Levin and Roger Altman, the founder of Evercore Partners Inc., are under consideration for the NEC post as well.

If named as chief of staff, Daley would replace Pete Rouse, whom Obama selected to fill the role on an interim basis after Rahm Emanuel resigned Oct. 1 to pursue a bid for mayor of Chicago.

Rouse has indicated to administration officials that he is reluctant to serve in that job for the remainder of Obama's presidency, according to a person familiar with the matter. Rouse also has signaled that he would stay as chief of staff if asked by the president, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private.

Rouse, who has worked for Obama since his days in the Senate, is conducting an internal review that covers personnel, policy and political strategy as the president contends with a new political landscape and gears up for his re-election bid less than two years from now. Obama is considering a number of staff changes. Senior adviser David Axelrod has said that he plans to leave in the coming months, and former campaign manager David Plouffe will join the administration.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Daley served as an Obama economic adviser. After the election, he was a co-chairman of Obama's transition team.

Daley, the younger brother of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, was commerce secretary during the second term of the Clinton administration, serving from January 1997 to June 2000. He was chairman of Vice President Al Gore's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2000.

After serving as president of SBC Communications for more than two years, he joined JPMorgan Chase in 2004.

While there, Daley has worked on some of the Midwest's biggest takeovers. He advised Chicago's Exelon Corp. on its unsuccessful 2004 proposal to buy Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. for $17.8 billion, and CBOT Holdings Inc., also based in Chicago, on its 2007 sale to CME Group Inc. for $11 billion, according to Corporate Control Alert, an industry newsletter.

Daley was a political mentor to Emanuel. The two worked together to get the union-opposed North American Free Trade Agreement passed in 1993. Emanuel was then a senior aide to Clinton and Daley was a special counsel to the president.

The youngest of seven children born to longtime Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and Eleanor "Sis" Daley, William Daley is a member of Illinois' most powerful political dynasty.

Besides his work as a banker, he serves on several corporate boards, including Boeing Co. and Abbott Laboratories.

The administration has come under fire from the business community, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The nation's biggest business lobbying group opposed Obama's health-care and financial-regulatory overhauls and committed $75 million to political ads in the midterm congressional elections, mainly directed against Democrats.

Still, Obama is generating more optimism among corporate executives after a series of actions and overtures, including a deal to extend tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, efforts to boost exports such as a U.S.-South Korea free-trade agreement, and a loosening of controls on some technology sales.

Obama met with 20 company executives on Dec. 15 in Washington and said afterward that he made "good progress" toward establishing closer cooperation between government and business to accelerate the economic recovery. The president has said private companies are crucial to the U.S. climbing out of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

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Prophecy Drills 71.17 Metres of 0.52% NiEq
(0.310 % Nickel 0.466 g/t PGMs +Au and 0.223% Copper)
from surface at Wellgreen Project in the Yukon

Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V: PCY) reports that it has received additional assays results from its 100-percent-owned Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu property in the Yukon, Canada. Diamond drill holes WS10-179 to WS10-182 were drilled during the summer of 2010 by Northern Platinum (which merged with Prophecy on September 23, 2010). WS10-183 was drilled by Prophecy in October 2010. Highlights from the newly received assays include 71.17 metres from surface of 0.52 percent NiEq (0.310 percent nickel, 0.466 g/t PGMs + Au, and 0.233 percent copper) and ended in mineralization. For more drill highlights, please visit:

http://prophecyresource.com/news_2010_nov29.php