The inside story of how the Clintons built a $2 billion global empire

Really good article from the Washington Post


http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-inside-story-of-how-the-clintons-built-a-2-billion-global-empire/2015/06/02/b6eab638-0957-11e5-a7ad-b430fc1d3f5c_story.html

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Today, the Clinton Foundation is unlike anything else in the history of the nation and, perhaps, the world: It is a global philanthropic empire run by a former U.S. president and closely affiliated with a potential future president, with the audacious goal of solving some of the world’s most vexing problems by bringing together the wealthiest, glitziest and most powerful people from every part of the planet.

The evolution of the foundation, which began as a modest nonprofit focused largely on the ex-president’s library in Arkansas, is a nearly perfect reflection of the Clintons themselves. It was not designed as a master plan but rather has grown, one brainstorm at a time, in accordance with the ambitious, loyal, restless and, often, scattered nature of its primary namesake. Many programs were sparked by chance encounters in Bill Clinton’s life. A meeting with a Harlem shopkeeper. A friend’s plan to fight AIDS. The flight to Davos. Emergency heart surgery.

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“You go from running the country,” one foundation insider said, “to doing nothing.”

It wasn’t quite nothing. There was a Clinton Foundation back then, started in 1997. There were vague plans for future international charity work. But the nonprofit focused mainly on Little Rock, where Clinton was planning a library and a graduate school of public service, and envisioning an urban renaissance for the city that nurtured his political career. So the famously obsessive Clinton obsessed some more about buildings in Little Rock.


Rest at the link.. fairly long article