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Yahoo!Some facts that don't seem to be getting enough attention in the current discussion of the Paulson Plan's attempt to steal billions of dollars from taxpayers to bail out his cronies on Wall Street:
We need to know that Treasury Secretary Paulson cannot be expected to criticize, must less penalize, the greedy executives who ran the country's financial institutions into the ground because he was the model on which they patterned their behavior.
When Paulson took over Goldman Sachs his ascendancy to the position was chronicled in Business Week with the headline, "Mr. Risk Goes to Wall Street." The article reported on his high risk strategies.
Sure enough, the $20 billion in Goldman Sachs debt that existed when he arrived was $100 billion when he departed six years later. This debt was largely due to excess leveraging of the capital of the business and investments in absurdly packaged mortgage debt.
In reward for his excess he was compensated to the tune of one-half of a billion dollars by Goldman Sachs.
We know that he now he wants us to rescue his peers by allowing him unlimited and nonrenewable discretion to spend our money to clean up such messes (the infamous Section 8 of his plan. But most people are not paying attention to his proposed Section 2 which would allow him to employ any company or group he chooses to conduct this theft without regard to any law or rule limiting their choice. That is, such contractors will be allowed without regard to conflict of interest rules or competitive review or compliance with financial regulations, etc.
Fortunately it appears that the public has had it with such greed and avarice from this administration and this apologist for the crooks who got us here.
Any "rescue" plan must begin with helping the victims of this current theft and denying further loot to the ones who already have stolen so much.
And no candidate for federal office who supports this corrupt proposal should get the vote of anyone outside Wall Street and K Street. —Glen Mowrer
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"Paulson Plan's attempt to steal billions of dollars from taxpayers to bail out his cronies on Wall Street"
Alan Greenspan deregulated the the financial markets not Paulson.
The $$ will be used to buy assets at discount prices not pay a salary to anyone. If we don't buy the assets at lower than market prices it is likely we will enter into a depression because home prices will plummet and peoples 401k's and retirements will lose half there value when the stock market craches. Unemployment will increase because businesses will have to consolidate and cut back.
I agree it is a raw deal and a bad situation created by to much laissez faire deregulation, but Paulson had little or nothing to do with it, even if he was savvy enough to profit from it at Goldman Sachs. It takes a thief to catch a thief.
Georgy (anonymous profile)
October 2, 2008 at 7:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Actually , Goldman Sachs under Paulson was one of the big dogs pushing the S.E.C. in 2004 to modify the amount of debt they could carry . This fatal change opened the floodgates allowing these big firms to invest in derivatives & other exotics. Mr. Paulson certainly does have mud on his shoes here .
geeber (anonymous profile)
October 3, 2008 at 4:27 a.m. (Suggest removal)
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