Word: paulson
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Back in September, V.V. Chari, an economist at the University of Minnesota and an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, got a call from a Congressman. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were arguing that they needed $700 billion to save the nation's financial system, and the Congressman wanted to know what to make of it all. Chari said he didn't know - he hadn't looked at the data. Policymakers kept talking about how banks weren't lending to businesses or to individuals or even to each other, so Chari pulled numbers...
...some money. Bush's hand was forced. In theory, the job of saving the car companies would have gone to the Commerce Department, but its chief, Carlos Gutierrez, doesn't have access to the kind of money Detroit needs, so Bush gave the job to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson...
Danger-seeking was so popular that somehow pirates came back. Someone gave Don Imus a radio job. When investment banks crumbled, we decided to hand over $700 billion to Henry Paulson, who used to run an investment bank. It was the kind of year when a famous football player could think, Sure, I've drunk a lot and have a loaded gun in my pants, but the music in this club makes me want to put my hands in my pockets and dance...
...course, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates are heavyweights too, and State, Defense, Justice and Treasury are all Cabinet jobs that have kept their clout. (Bush's latest Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, is apparently the new leader of the free world.) But the "team of rivals" analogies only go so far because Cabinets are no longer teams. And Cabinet Secretaries are increasingly chosen to send messages to interest groups and ethnic groups...
...Within days, Washington snapped into action. Secretary Paulson strode into the Capitol building with a now-infamous $700 billion rescue package, and even wounded egos and weekend flights could not dampen the urgent sense that something must be done, overtime pay be damned. At first, his plan did not pass—a common fate of laws that are divisive, unwanted, and absolutely necessary. This time, however, the crisis intervened. The bill was put to another vote and signed into law with bipartisan and hysterical relief—because there was nothing else to be done...