Among those spotted in the crowd were Roger Altman, a founder and chairman at Evercore and treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, and Peter Orszag, who served as budget director to Obama.

Despite the well-heeled nature of the audience, Obama suggested at one point that the group was intimately familiar with the devastation caused by the economic downturn.

"A lot of people in this room have seen directly the damage that's been done by this recession," the president said. "Ordinary folks have been hurting badly," he added later in his remarks, before commenting on the unemployment rate and other "hardship."