Word: paulson
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...just say this - I believe in relationships," he intones during a lengthy interview in his office. A 6-ft. 1-in. (1.85 m) former Dartmouth football star with a permanently hoarse voice and a direct manner, Paulson doesn't go out of his way to be ingratiating. He does go out of his way to keep the conversation going. "I spend a lot of time on the phone," he says. "I find I assimilate information by talking to people and getting inputs from many people. I always said to my kids, 'Don't assume.' I say to the people here...
...Building a rapport with President Bush was Paulson's first priority upon taking office. But he also set out to build or reinforce strong ties with the Fed's Bernanke, other Cabinet members, his counterparts overseas, Wall Street CEOs and - perhaps most important - congressional Democrats. Before his appointment, Paulson had been a generous donor to Republican candidates. But he refused to campaign for Republicans in the 2006 congressional elections - a decision that endeared him to the new leadership after the Democrats swept to victory...
...During his first year in office, Paulson's most high-profile relationship-building efforts were with the Chinese government, in a series of top-level meetings in Beijing and Washington. These weren't a flop - Paulson proudly points to the failure of anti-China trade legislation in Congress and the 20% rise in the yuan vs. the dollar - but they weren't a dramatic success either. Then came trouble, which spread from subprime mortgages to financial markets in general in August 2007. The chief connection was that subprime loans - those sold to less qualified borrowers - were purchased and repackaged...
...President's Working Group on Financial Markets, an inter-agency collection of regulators led by Paulson, had actually been looking into potential problems with hedge funds and derivatives. But they missed CDOs. Paulson terms the oversight "obvious after the fact." Not so, say some observers. "I've got a lot of respect for Paulson and his credentials," says Glenn Hubbard, who was chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers in the early Bush years and is now dean of Columbia Business School. "But this looks like the Fed and Treasury were lurching from crisis to crisis, when much...
...through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. But much of the financial action in recent years has moved to companies for which there is no such shutdown plan. When Wall Street firm and major mortgage player Bear Stearns experienced something akin to a bank run in March, the solution that Paulson and Bernanke came up with was a hastily arranged sale to JPMorgan Chase & Co., backed by a $29 billion guarantee from the Fed. The Fed is responsible for keeping prices stable and credit flowing. Bailing out troubled lenders to prevent a financial meltdown is a entirely different kind...