Word: neill
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That only partly explains why O'Neill had to be coaxed into taking the job of Treasury Secretary. The other reason is that O'Neill didn't know George W. Bush well. So the two men, joined by Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, had lunch in Austin three weeks ago. O'Neill told friends later that Bush and Cheney made him feel like an instant insider, and he was happy the conversation had been so candid...
...vaulted past the Secretaries at State and Defense in Washington's pecking order. Our national security is increasingly defined by economics: America now defends currencies more often than it defends borders, and its stability has been threatened as much by Russian hedge funds as rogue Russian nukes. But O'Neill's immediate task is to translate still nascent Bush economic policies to lawmakers and financial markets at a time when the engine of the world economy is downshifting. "He has been getting ready for this all his life," said Frank Zarb, chairman of the NASDAQ. "He is honest, straightforward...
Returning to Washington, O'Neill will find himself with new problems but also old friends. O'Neill met Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan back in 1969, when both men worked as junior aides in the Nixon White House, and has stayed in touch ever since. O'Neill was such a whiz at mastering the details of Medicare and Social Security that Gerald Ford's White House chief of staff, a young guy named Dick Cheney, promoted him to deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. By 1975, Cabinet officers like Donald Rumsfeld, the once-and-future Pentagon chief, were...
...Neill left government after Ford lost in 1976 and spent 23 years turning cyclical smokestack companies into sturdy profit centers. He first worked his way up the executive ranks of International Paper by boosting the quality of its products, shutting down marginal plants and investing heavily in others. While working at IP in the dark days of the late 1970s, O'Neill made a habit of visiting the plants of competitors overseas that were stealing market share, and then bringing back ways to beat them at their own game. In the late 1980s, he took over as CEO of Alcoa...
Quiet and intense, O'Neill described himself recently as a "free-ranging, self-admitted maverick," but he's also a wonk, drilling down into the details of a problem personally until he finds what he wants. When Hillary Clinton's health-care plan came out in 1994, O'Neill stayed up all night and read the 240-page document. "Mention Social Security to some people," says former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, who serves with O'Neill on the board of Lucent Technologies, "and their eyes glaze over. But Paul's eyes light up. He knows about the details...