Free Republic

Is Treasury Chief Hank Paulson the financial equivalent of Civil War General George B. McClellan? The "Young Napoleon" brilliantly organized and trained Union armies in the first year and a half of the Civil War. His problem: He couldn't bring himself to actually engage the enemy, always proffering excuses as to why he couldn't take decisive action. An exasperated Abraham Lincoln finally fired him. Mr. Paulson repeatedly says he wants a strong U.S. dollar. Last month he told Reuters: "I've been as consistent as anyone that you've ever heard in saying that the strong dollar [is] in our nation's interest."...

NEW YORK (AFP) - Newly minted US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in his first public comments since assuming office last month that a "strong dollar" is in the United States' best interests. Paulson picked up the baton right where his predecessor left off in stating his adherence to a strong dollar in a speech at New York's Columbia University. "I believe that a strong dollar is in our nation's interest and that currency values should be determined in open and competitive markets in response to underlying economic fundamentals," Paulson said, according to a transcript. The dollar has weakened in...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin was appointed Tuesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to head the State and Consumer Services Agency. Marin was appointed treasurer by President Bush in 2001 and served until May 2003, when she resigned to return to California. She lost a Republican primary race for the U.S. Senate in 2004. Since then, she has been a member and chair of the state's Integrated Waste Management Board. "Rosario's decades of experience serving and representing the people of California at the federal, state and local levels have given her a unique understanding of the important ways...

It is rare to have books exploring the legacy of a presidential administration still in its first term. It is rarer still to have the number of insider accounts that Americans have access to in 2004. “These books appear to be painting history before our eyes,” said Charlotte Abbott, news editor of Publishers Weekly. “No one in the industry of publishing can remember a time since Watergate when so many political books have come out and the public has been interested – and a lot of those Watergate titles came out after.” One of the reporters who first exposed Watergate,...

OLD JOESen. Joe Lieberman has already turned down two jobs offered by President Bush, so why not go for a trifecta? Lieberman again tops a list of folks being considered for head of the new national intelligence directorate, a job that Lieberman might actually have to seriously consider. He smartly turned down the Homeland Security chief job, and the U.N. ambassadorship just wasn't big enough for him, even if he would have been given an opportunity to work on the Middle East peace process a bit. But Lieberman did take on a large role in shaping the national intelligence legislation,...

In Cabinet news, John Snow agreed to continue serving as Secretary of the Treasury. Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi submitted his resignation to President Bush, who said, "As a valuable member of my Cabinet, Tony Principi has served as a tireless advocate for 25 million veterans." It's a short trip to Sanity Island today / tonight, as there aren't many photos.

Bush to Replace Treasury's Snow -NY Times Mon Dec 6, 2004 01:29 AM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush plans to replace John Snow as U.S. Treasury Secretary and possible successors include Andrew Card, currently the White House chief of staff, the New York Times reported Monday. A definite decision has been made to replace Snow as soon as a successor is named, an adviser to the White House told the newspaper, but it is unclear how close Bush is to a decision on a replacement or if he has already made one, the Times said. Aside from Card,...

President Bush plans to overhaul his economic team for the second time in two years and wants to tap prominent figures outside the administration to help sell rewrites of Social Security and the tax laws to Congress and the country, White House aides and advisers said over the weekend. The aides said the replacement of four of the five top economic officials -- including the Treasury and Commerce secretaries, with only budget director Joshua B. Bolten likely to remain -- is part of Bush's preparation for sending Congress an ambitious second-term domestic agenda.

SNOW REMOVALThe Bush Administration has never liked its Cabinet secretaries to be the flashy, spotlight-seeking type, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell aside. Most agency leaders in the first term tended to disappear into the background, toe the Administration line, and keep the trains moving on time. Now most of the higher profile Cabinet folk are jumping ship (or are being pushed), and replacements are being brought on line. Again, the Administration isn't surprising anyone. Low profile types, who will do a serviceable job, and keep out of the Administration's way for the most part. But in the case of one...

Who are the G7 finance ministers? Posted: February 10, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Joan Veon© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com BOCA RATON, Fla. – To most people the G7 finance ministers are just a bunch of guys who get together throughout the year and talk over the economy, but it is not just the U.S. economy – it is the global economy. In order to understand their position of power, we must go back to August 1971 when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. The Group of Seven first met in 1973, two years after Nixon severed the last attachment the dollar...

I once had dinner with Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary who is now making headlines with a scathing portrayal of his days in the Bush administration prior to his firing in December 2002. Bush critics will hail Mr. O'Neill as a truth-teller, White House aides are already calling him a back-stabber. In fact, Mr. O'Neill is a relic. The man I broke bread with was clearly a product of the Nixon and Ford administrations, in which he had served, and simply hadn't adapted to the post-Reagan Republican Party. Mr. O'Neill came into the Bush administration on the recommendation of...

President George W. Bush's performance at cabinet meetings resembled that of "a blind man in a room full of deaf people", according to Paul O'Neill (pictured), who was fired as Treasury secretary in 2002. The remarkable personal attack is made by Mr O'Neill in a forthcoming book, according to excerpts from a television interview to be broadcast on Sunday. In the CBS Sixty Minutes interview Mr O'Neill, the former chief executive of the aluminium company Alcoa, says there was little constructive dialogue between officials and the president. Speaking about his first meeting with Mr Bush, which lasted about an hour,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Nerves gripped investors worldwide after US Treasury Secretary John Snow appeared tacitly to abandon an eight-year policy of supporting a strong dollar. The perceived shift raised fears that further dollar declines would erode the value of foreigners' US investments, economists said. And while soothing concerns of deflation in the United States, it also ramped up those same fears in Europe, and complicated the long deflation battle in Japan, they said. "What the United States has made clear is that they are not going to undertake any efforts to try to defend the currency," said Citigroup global currency...

<p>Initial reactions to the appointment of John Snow as Treasury secretary missed the point entirely. One fellow was quoted saying Mr. Snow is little more than a clone of Paul O'Neill, with a matching resume.</p> <p>Really? Mr. O'Neill has a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's in public administration (bureaucracy), while Mr. Snow has a Ph.D. in economics and a law degree. John Snow is well qualified to participate in the formulation of policy, not just to be a better salesman for policies that others design. He will prove a more effective communicator than his predecessor because he is more likely to know what he is talking about.</p>

U.S. President George W. Bush is hoping that his newly appointed Treasury Secretary John Snow, the former chief executive officer of railway-holding company CSX Corporation, will provide his economic policy with the same kind of star quality and sense of drive that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has brought to national security. Similarly, President Bush is expecting that Stephen Friedman, a senior principal with the equity firm of Marsh & McLennan who is slated to head the National Economic Council (NEC), will supply economic policymaking with the same combination of intelligence, energy and media know-how that Condoleezza Rice demonstrates in her...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — The U.S. treasury secretary on Tuesday praised Pakistani's efforts to stop the flow of money to terrorists, pledged more U.S. aid and held talks on forgiving $1 billion in debt to the United States. ``There is a major effort under way and continuing in Pakistan to go after tainted money ... finding bad people and capturing their money,'' Paul O'Neill said after meeting with Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz and other economic officials in Islamabad. O'Neill said Pakistan's cooperation in the fight against terrorism was not tied to debt relief. ``I don't think these are connected subjects,''...