Meet Joe the Plumber's Brother: Rick the Trader

By Kyle-Anne Shiver and Lee Cary

Last year a casual neighborhood visit from Obama, during a photo-op door-to-door campaign, produced Joe the Plumber. Now, from an equally unlikely source (CNBC), comes Joe's blood brother -- Rick Santelli. The issue is still the same: spreading the wealth.

In case you’ve been sequestered on a murder jury the last few days, Santelli did a five minute rant on CNBC ripping Obama's bailout plans. See the video here.

The audacity of this obscure CNBC correspondent! This upstart, Rick Santelli!

His network colleagues, NBC’s Brian Williams and talk show host Matt Lauer, interrogated Santelli on air, with negative results.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Santelli doesn’t know what he’s talking about and invited him to the White House for a cup of decaf coffee. (The implied smack is that Rick the Trader needs to calm down.)

Here’s Santelli’s background :

A veteran trader and financial executive, Santelli has provided live reports on the markets in print and on local and national radio and television. He joined CNBC from the Institutional Financial Futures and Options at Sanwa Futures, L.L.C. There, he was a vice president handling institutional trading and hedge accounts for a variety of futures related products.

Prior to that, Santelli worked as vice president of Institutional Futures and Options at Rand Financial Services, Inc., served as managing director at the Derivative Products Group of Geldermann, Inc., and was Vice President in charge of Interest Rate Futures and Options at the Chicago Board of Trade for Drexel, Burnham, Lambert. Santelli began his career in 1979 as a trader and order filler at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in a variety of markets including gold, lumber, CD's, T-bills, foreign currencies and livestock.

He is a graduate of the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana with a Bachelor of Science degree. Santelli has been a member of both the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.

Now, here’s Gibbs' background :

Robert L. Gibbs (b. March 29, 1971) is an American political consultant, and the current White House Press Secretary. Gibbs was the communications director for U.S. Senator Barack Obama and Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Gibbs, who has worked with Obama since 2004, was press secretary of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign and has previously specialized in Senate campaigns, having served as communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and for four individual Senate campaigns, including those of Obama in 2004 and Fritz Hollings in 1998. Gibbs was also the press secretary of Representative Bob Etheridge. On November 22, 2008, Gibbs was announced as the press secretary of the Obama administration.[4] He assumed the role of press secretary on January 20, 2009, and gave his first official briefing on January 22…

While a student at North Carolina State in 1991, Gibbs became an intern for Congressman Glenn Browder. Gibbs quickly rose through the ranks of Browder's staff, rising to become the representative's executive assistant in Washington, D.C. Gibbs returned to Alabama in 1996 to work on Browder's unsuccessful Senate campaign that year.

So, let’s see if we have this straight. Political hack since college, Robert Gibbs, invited seasoned financial executive Santelli to the White House where Gibbs (the bureaucratic factotum) will lecture Santelli (the trader/financial executive) on the markets. Rick said he’ll come.

If they sell tickets, put me down for a dozen.