chairman and CEO, positions he held from 1963 to 1971. In 1969, he was invited by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, 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. United States Secretary of Commerce (1972–73) In 1971, he was named assistant to the president for international economic affairs by U.S. President Richard Nixon. In April 1971, Peterson produced a secret report for Nixon on the volatile world economy and which argued the case that the United States was in economic decline under the existing world order of trade, which the U.S. had helped build immediately after World War II. To stem that decline, according to Peterson, the United States would have to challenge competing nations in the trading sphere by adopting industrial policy. The report impressed Nixon and the idea of American competitive decline soon became "an article of popular belief." The report established some of the intellectual foundations of Nixon's stunning decision in August 1971 to upend the Bretton Woods agreement. Professional economists derided the thesis as a form of mercantilism that betrayed "economic illiteracy." 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. During his tenure, Peterson was a strong critic of the rising financial debt of the United States. Post-Washington career Peterson was chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers (1973–1977) and Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. (1977–1984). In 1985, he co-founded with Stephen A. Schwarzman the prominent private equity and investment management firm, the Blackstone Group, and was for many years its chairman. At Blackstone, he made a fortune including the $1.9 billion he received when it went public in 2007, that funded many of his charitable and political causes. Clinton presidency In 1992, he was one of the co-founders of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan citizens' organization 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