Sense on Cents

Might Hank Paulson have selective amnesia or whatever happened to real journalism?

My former question actually could be posed to most pols, bankers, and regulators over the last number of years.  The latter would apply even longer than that.

Well I guess posing tough questions and demanding answers in this day and age would likely leave journalists writing little more than monologues. What a pity.

I see another example of this shallow journalism on display in written reviews and interviews with former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. What brings Paulson back on stage? 

The fact that he recently released a 23-page commentary Five Years Later: On The Brink — The New Prologue.

Do you think Ol’ Hank might be trying to stay relevant and burnish that reputation a little? You think? Otherwise he may find himself relegated to the curbside with the likes of Alan Greenspan, Chris Cox, Chris Dodd, Phil Gramm, Franklin Raines, and so many others who had the feed-bag on at the Wall Street-Washington trough leading into — and for some during and through– the crisis.

I will make a point of finding the twenty odd minutes it might take to read Hank’s new 23-page release. But if the reviews provided by Dealb%k’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and CNNMoney are a guide as to what we might find in Hank’s work, we won’t have to spend much more time than that.  This said, I do owe it to Hank and readers here to properly review his work. I will do that.

Based on the aforementioned commentaries, I expect I will find in those 23-pages Hank’s opinion regarding the future of Fannie and Freddie, Dodd-Frank, “too-big-to-fail”, Wall Street bonuses, and more.

What am I not likely to find?

I do not expect that I will find Hank offering any opinions on his concerted efforts going back even to the late ’90s that led to the dramatic increase in regulatory capture and the tripling of leverage on Wall Street. No doubt the success of his work on both these fronts was instrumental in precipitating our crisis. But alas, I gather these topics might be too much to ask of the former secretary or of a journalist as well.

Yes, indeed, what a pity.

23-pages? This should be a very brief navigation.

You cannot make this stuff up, folks.

Larry Doyle

Please pre-order a copy of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy, that will be published by Palgrave Macmillan on January 7, 2014.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 29th, 2013 at 8:17 AM and is filed under General, Henry Paulson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.