May 30, 2006

silhouette3.JPG From the desk of Jane Galt:

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

We're getting a new Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson of Goldman Sachs. Actually, despite my flippant headline, Mr Paulson is a big Wall Street heavyweight with oodles of financial experience. Unfortunately, he enters the office at a rather inauspicious time. The White House has neither the time nor the political capital for major economic policymaking; if Mr Paulson is to move centre-stage, it will most likely be as a troubleshooter for some financial crisis. RIght now, however, the economic scene is unusually calm, which will leave him little scope (though many think this is just the calm before the storm--which they suspect is the reason the White House is appointing a Wall Street big shot instead of a corporate CEO a la O'Neill and Snow.)

Posted by Jane Galt at May 30, 2006 1:59 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>
Comments

I'm suspecting that with Ken Lay still in the headlines and funny things going on in the yield curve, it might be a good time to not have a "corporate guy" at Treasury but a banking type. Although it may not make a lot of difference now...with the Fannie Mae pot bubbling higher & possibly providing lifetime employment for auditors, two stock market crashes so far this year (Persian Gulf & India) and a Fed chairman that seems determined to break something...I don't envy Paulson one bit.

Posted by: ellipsis on May 30, 2006 6:59 PM

This -- I think -- is good news. The trend on Wall Street is that you leave Goldman Sachs to strike it rich at a hedge fund. Paulson, who's already struck it rich, will enter public life. I hope it treats him well.

Posted by: Taylor on May 30, 2006 8:17 PM

Taylor wrote:
The trend on Wall Street is that you leave Goldman Sachs to strike it rich at a hedge fund.

Perhaps Paulson remembers what struck the guys at LTCM? The universe of hedge funds is pretty big, but I wonder how many of them are doing the same thing...

Posted by: ellipsis on May 30, 2006 9:50 PM

Leaving GS for the public sphere worked out ok for Mr. Corzine. Perhaps Paulson'll do ok.

At any rate, Jane, kudos for the Who reference in the context of a Treasury Secretary appointment. I'm going out on a limb here and saying you may have broken virgin ground on this one.

An "Anarchy in the U.K." allusion for the other Snow, Tony?

Posted by: Mike on May 31, 2006 7:31 AM

Well, he gets his name on the money, that's pretty much reason enough right there.

Posted by: Yaron on May 31, 2006 7:33 PM


Reading about the ongoing soap opera that is Fannie Mae I am suddenly very glad that Franklin Raines never became Treasury Secretary. Ken Lay may be wondering about now why he's going to prison and Franklin...isn't.

Posted by: ellipsis on May 31, 2006 10:29 PM


Say, isn't this Paulson the same one who heads up the Nature Conservancy? NC has been in a little hot water lately because it's not appropriate for a nonprofit to make pretty big profits off of land sales...

Posted by: ellipsis on June 3, 2006 5:09 PM

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