Henry Paulson

Who is he: Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson, Jr. was the 74th US Treasury Secretary, in office from July 3, 2006 to January 20, 2009, during the height of the global meltdown and investment crisis. Henry Paulson was succeeded by the infamous Timothy Geithner who, as previous head of the New York Federal Reserve, joins Paulson in carrying much of the responsibility for the 2008 meltdown. Previously, Paulson was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.

Time magazine, formerly one of the leading public education and editorial tools of the media elite utilized to propagandize their world view, named Paulson in 2008 as a runner-up for its Person of the Year. The publication, in referring to the global financial crisis, stated: "If there is a face to this financial debacle, it is now his..." before concluding that he "is really bad at explaining why he made the choices he did" and that "given the ... realities he faced, there is no obviously better path [he] could have followed."

In hindsight it seems clearer and clearer that Henry Paulson and the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as the Anglo-American controlled monopoly, the Federal Reserve System, actually pursued exactly the wrong policies regarding the meltdown and collapse. These actions have actually prolonged the recession/depression with excess liquidity which is now building additional bubbles that will likely destroy what remains of the American financial system, the dollar and US Treasury debt.

As usual, Time magazine is just doing their job attempting to quell the American outrage at the bailouts and self-serving financial deals which benefited Goldman Sachs and other elite controlled banks both domestically and, as it turned out, internationally.

Background: Henry Paulson was born on March 28, 1946 in Palm Beach, Florida but was raised in Illinois as a Christian Scientist. At Barrington High School Paulson was a star athlete and after graduating in 1964 he attended Dartmouth University where Paulson received an A.B. in English in 1968. Paulson also attended Harvard Business School and received an MBA in 1970. He and his wife Wendy are the parents of two adult children and live in Chicago and Barrington Hills, Illinois.

Henry Paulson began his career as a staff assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense beginning in 1970 and then served in the Nixon Administration as an assistant to John Ehrlichman during the Watergate period. Follow his government career, in 1974 Paulson joined Goldman Sachs and moved quickly up the corporate ladder, eventually becoming chief executive after Jon Corzine. Paulson was compensated well, making over $37 million in 2005, and has a net worth of around $700 million.

Hank Paulson knows the Chinese system well as he has made over 70 visits to the nation. In 2004, Paulson and other major investment banking firms lobbied the SEC to remove the net capital rule which limited the firm's ability to leverage and increase risks. This uncontrolled leverage and exposure led to the collapse of several firms during the 2008 collapse, which were later bailed out at the urging of Paulson by American taxpayer dollars.

Paulson was nominated by President George W. Bush as the new US Treasury Secretary and sworn in on July 10, 2006 just in time for the looming financial crisis and market meltdown created by the Federal Reserve, Congress and self-serving actions Paulson had lobbied for in 2004. Paulson helped establish the Hope Now Alliance touted to help troubled homeowners during the subprime mortgage crisis but this was likely just desperate window dressing to salvage his reputation. A few of his quotes below may shed some light on his falsehoods and mistakes:

• April 2007, "All the signs I look at" show "the housing market is at or near the bottom."

• On July 20, 2008, after Indymac Bank failed: "It's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation."

• August 10, 2008, Secretary Paulson claimed that he had no plans to inject any capital into Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. (On September 7, 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into conservatorship.)

• September 19, 2008, the Paulson Plan had the US government transfer hundreds of billions of Treasury dollars to favored investment financial firms to help clean up nonperforming mortgages threatening the liquidity of those firms.

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