Untitled Document
Anyone knows that if you keep doing what you've been doing, you'll keep
getting what you've been getting. In this case, the White House keeps hiring its
officers from Goldman Sachs despite the constant
shadow that follows the company's
business and its
dealings and despite the consistently
lousy public performance by its former officers.
[Henry]
Paulson, 60, is the [CEO] of Goldman Sachs and one of Wall Street's most
respected and highly compensated executives, with a net worth estimated
at more than $700 million.
He initially rebuffed overtures about the Treasury job, which is widely viewed
as having declined in influence and prestige during Bush's presidency.
But Bush and other officials persisted, eager to bring aboard someone who
might do for this administration what another former Goldman chief,
Robert Rubin, did for President Bill Clinton.
They enlisted mutual friends to persuade Paulson to accept, and they had
an advantage in Bush's new chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, [another]
former Goldman executive.
Can it get any clearer than this? Goldman Sachs is attached at the
umbilicus to the White House. Their offspring get shuttled directly to the executive
branch and its departments.
Paulson would bring . . . credibility with financial markets at a time of
huge budget and trade deficits and a particular expertise in dealing with
the rise of China, one of the biggest economic and foreign policy challenges
facing the United States.
[Bush] said Paulson would serve as his "principal adviser on the broad
range of domestic and international economic issues that affect the
well-being of all Americans."
BULLSH*T. His principal - indeed sole - job is to protect the well-being
of bankers and other swindlers.
Paulson said he had a "keen appreciation for the role that capital markets
play in driving economic growth" and added, without being specific, that
the United States had to "take steps to maintain our competitive edge
in the world."
Those include busting
working Americans' knee caps.
Paulson's nomination drew praise from business groups and from at least a
few prominent Democrats who have criticized Bush's tax cuts and budget deficits.
Rubin, the Treasury secretary under Clinton, said Bush's choice was
"well done" and praised Paulson as "very well respected"
and "thoughtful."
That's reassuring coming from the same guy who tried to keep Enron afloat before
it cratered.
[Rubin,]
called the Treasury and asked undersecretary for domestic finance Peter Fisher
"what he thought of the idea" of the U.S. Treasury persuading
bond-rating agencies to hold off reducing the freefalling Enron's credit rating.
This sounded like a good idea to Rubin, who was acting in his new
capacity as CEO of Citigroup, one of Enron's top creditors.
But, hey who's counting, right? Not Arthur Anderson, nor the White House.
[Meanwhile,] Paul Ashworth, a senior economist at Capital Economics, predicted
that Paulson would not bring major changes to economic policy and that he
would have to grapple with underlying economic forces that include a steady
decline in the value of the dollar.
"The best he can do is try to ensure that decline continues
in an orderly fashion and does not turn into a collapse," Ashworth
wrote in a note to clients Monday.
In other words, it's hopeless. They ARE going to 'pull' the
economy and NOBODY, no matter how savvy and well connected they are, is going
to stop them.
A senior White House official who was granted anonymity to discuss internal
personnel deliberations said Paulson was on the "short list"
as soon as the White House began seriously searching for Snow's successor,
with credentials that fit the times domestically and internationally.
* * *
Even as Paulson balked, the White House official said, the search kept coming
back to him, and Bush instructed Bolten to keep pressing him. The official
said Paulson's concerns also included his family life and succession issues
at Goldman.
The turning point was the meeting with the president at the White
House, during which the administration argued that reports of the
Treasury Department's diminishment were exaggerated. "Sometimes it's
more myth and perception than reality," the official said, "and
when you get briefed on the reality, it becomes reassuring."
Paulson accepted the job the next day.
Bush must have promised him every working American's soul, and those
of their grandchildren, on a silver platter.