Posted on 02/07/2010 8:19:18 AM PST by FromLori
Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. is out with his new book, On the Brink, where he details his version of events that occurred on Wall Street and Washington D.C.during the financial crisis while he was Treasury Secretary.
All that you really need to know about this fairy tale can be found in the front of the book in what is labeled as "Author's Notes". In this preface, Paulson tells us that he doesn't take notes and doesn't use email and his staff was frustrated because he didn't send out memos, but fortunately, he tells us, he has a very good memory.
He then goes on to say that most of what he did was by telephone, but that not all the calls were logged and that there are inaccuracies in the calls that were logged.
Getting back to his excellent memory, he then tells us that because the crisis period was hectic and stressful that there are many details he may have forgotten.
In the first chapter, he tells that he is a "free market" man, and then proceeds to tells us that when he worked in the Nixon Administration he proposed to Nixon that a value added tax be launched.
Fortunately for America, Nixon saw the dangers in a VAT. He told Paulson that once established such a tax would become a huge new source of revenue for the government, and fearing future Democratic control of such an instrument, Nixon went on to tell Paulson that he did not want to start the country down that road, much to the chagrin of "free market" Paulson.
Seemingly out of the blue, Paulson mentions in the book the resignation of Eliot Spitzer as governor of New York. Spitzer resigned after being caught using hookers. Paulson tells us that, while many on Wall Street were gleeful of the jam Spitzer found himself in, he was merely "shocked and saddened." So shocked and saddened, I guess, that he had to bring it up in his book about the financial crisis.
Paulson early in the book also reminds us just how tight the inner circle is. He tells us that one of the last Goldman Sachs conferences that he was involved with before leaving for Treasury took place in Chicago where the guest speakers were Warren Buffett and then-Senator Barack Obama.
As for the crisis, itself, he's sticking to the story that he saved the country.
ping
paulson hearts obama
Hank Paulson feared there would be a run on the dollar during the early phase of the financial crisis when global concerns were focused on the US, the former Treasury secretary has told the Financial Times.
He feared Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley would go down along with Washington Mutual and Wachovia.
The frenzied manoeuvring came in the three-week period between the failure of Lehman on September 15 2008, and Columbus Day weekend in early October, when the global financial system was on the verge of meltdown.
“Banks were going down like flies,” Mr Paulson told the FT. As his book details, he was scrambling to secure Tarp bail-out funds from Congress.
“The timing could not have been worse since we were months or weeks from the election so you had the collision of markets and politics.”
Although a Republican, Mr Paulson found it harder to deal with John McCain than Barack Obama – raising the raising the interesting (and unanswered) question of which candidate Mr Paulson voted for.
Source Financial Times.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/772748d6-0e94-11df-bd79-00144feabdc0.html
Funny, he always struck me as being a dumb political hack.
Thank God for the NSA and ECHELON.
It is a guarantee they have the trans-script!!
To be a fly on the wall lol we won’t ever see them anyway paulson loves obama it makes you wonder if they worked together to destroy America.
Ah, yes the Great Oral History by Baron Von Munchhausen.
Cracked Crackpot!
Good grief! The question is why Bush hired this guy. Didn’t he know who the guy was sleeping with?
>>paulson hearts obama
Of course he does. Paulson’s a Quisling, NyLon wearing, Fabian Socialist POS SOaB.
You hit the nail right on the head “Fabian Socialist” part of the Capitalist Conspiracy!
I just witnessed his interview on Meet the Press and that is one ultra liberal man! No wonder Bush found himself in such fiscal trouble. Bush will go down as our Carter, if not worse, and his pal Paulson is partly to blame.
the good news, everyone is about to break their legs running away from him!!
but we must keep an eye on all of them, because they can't be allowed back when the smoke clears...
they will give us more of the same!!!
This guy didn't just lurch to the left...
he made a 90 degree turn and started running!!
Now, all good Americans are against his radical policies!!
Hank sure did seem like the inside man for the bank panic. He gabs and others were listening. Remember that three page outline that Paulson and Bernanke waved in the press conference to get us all panicked. It turned into 1500 pages and Bernanke faded to background to let Paulson take the heat. On second thought Bernanke is the inside man and Paulson is th e stooge.IMHO.
I have probably said it so many times on here that people are sick of hearing it but those big banks JP Morgan, Govt. Sucks, Citi Fraud, etc. the “TBTF” all donated heavily to obama.
I have zero sympathy for them or paulson,geithner, etc. any so called regulation by zero is just a joke smoke and mirrors anyway just like dirty dodd’s trick with the credit card give them a year to raise the interest rates and then lock them in with regulation is what that broke down to. We all know why that was he was on their payroll as well.
Funny how obama said the bank bailouts were the greatest accomplishment of his first year NOT when you realize why he said that.
Then AIG and Fannie/Freddie and all that crap sticking it to us the taxpayer that was not all because the Banks were forced to loan they INVENTED these toxic loans because of Greed had they not done so no one in govt. could have bothered them to loan to unqualified people and that is the fact that those who pity the banks seem to forget.
Dumb political hack, no. You don’t get to be CEO of Goldman Sachs by being dumb.
Crooked political hack, yes. Obama shill, yes. In bed with Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, the Chicago Mafia, and Obama, yes.
At least he remembered that the $700,000,000,000 figure for TARP was a number picked out of thin air, solely for its shock value!
"The logic of the conspiracy theorists in this regard is, of course, impeccable: Goldman alumnus Josh Bolten runs the White House, while his former boss, Hank Paulson, runs the Treasury. They both speak regularly to former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, now over at Citigroup, who ran Goldman before Paulson and who keeps Paulson and Bolton dangling like puppets on a string. They all supposedly touch base with the heads of the Italian and Canadian central banks—both Goldman alumni—and with Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, ex Goldman. What's more Paulson is now getting his advice on how to handle the crisis from Ken Wilson, the recently retired Goldman partner and financial-institutions M&A banker, who Paulson just recruited to Washington to help him out. Already at Treasury were Goldman alumni Dan Jester, Anthony Ryan, David Nason and Bob Hoyt, the department's general counsel. And—the conspiracy crowd can't help but point out—Neel Kashkari, 35, a former vice-president at Goldman who Paulson recruited as assistant secretary of international affairs in 2006, has just been appointed—by Paulson—to run, on an interim basis, the new $700 billion bailout fund."
What about head of "Homeland Security"? You think Napalitano is the sharpest knife in the proverbial drawer?
Paulson himself said that he didn't make use of email - doesn't sound very sharp to me.
In fact, I don't hold the top dog down at the White House in too high a regard on the ol' IQ meter.
Napolitano is dumb as a rock. She’s a politician. But you don’t get to be CEO of the top investment firm in the world by being dumb. Paulson knew exactly what he was doing.
Update:
Now Paulson has teamed up with James Baker and other internationalist rinos to promote the carbon tax ...talk about an endless source of revenue for bloated government...
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