In addition, Paulsen has just transformed the entire economy into Chicago-style Affirmative Action.

Go! Obama Go! Your job is to destroy America, right?

Seems to me that Raines, Franks, Obama, and Dodd were playing with matches and gasoline awful close to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Paulson is a former member of the International Monetary Fund Board of Governors.. The IMF was founded by members of the British Fabian.

Members of that society established both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund at the Bretton Woods Conference.

The socialist philosophy of the original Fabians has not been
adopted by the fascio-corporatists who control the IMF and world bank.

What has been adopted is the Fabian’s plan to take money from the industrialized nations and send it to the third world nations.

The difference is, the fascio-corporatists only want to lend money.

For instance, why lend money on a million invidual cars in the U.S. when you can float a loan to “lower Slobovia” and get a heck of a lot bigger commission all at once plus the interest on the loan.

Can you say, “golden parachute?”

Me: Paulson’s efforts at explaining the crisis, educating the public, and addressing criticisms and alternative approaches has been negligent

You: You don’t have to support the plan, but I like banks. Paulson is trying hard.

Me: Maybe so, but his efforts at explaining, educating, persuading, and addressing have been PATHETIC.

This is a Republic. When the Treasury Secretary proposes the biggest line item in the budget, he needs to educate the public, address criticism, and provide feedback to what other people are viable alternative approaches.

“Do this or we die” is not effective leadership.

I suspect you will continue to refrain from addressing this critical point just as Paulson has failed to address in any meaningful way, the alternative approaches that others had proposed.

I’d like to respond to the original post, too, because I think there are some good points, but I also agree with the poster saying there are a lot of assumptions and stretches in the analysis. But the biggest problem is in the title, which insinuates that Paulson’s role is in some way political. Everyone has to keep in mind that Paulson is a monetary policymaker … not a fiscal policymaker and he certainly isn’t an elected official or creature of politics. That doesn’t mean his job is void of politics at times, but his job to drive monetary policy cannot be influenced by the presidential campaigns or candidates. Paulson’s goal is to stabilize the financial markets and that’s what his plan focused. Was the plan perfect? No; indeed, it probably wasn’t even ideal, but the fact remaains that the financial markets had to be rescued and that’s what he’s working towards. All of the other points, whether assumption or fact, are really just Monday morning quarterbacking, because from this side of things and from the armchair, it’s easy to say Paulson should have done “X” or did “Y” when “I” would have done something else, blah, blah, blah.

This may be a surprise to many, but managing the strongest financial markets in the world is a little more difficult than one might think. The monetary policymakers worked with the information they had to solve the situation at hand. Moreover, people like Bernanke have worked to apply the principles that drive long-term economic stability, so that once we move past this short term systemic risk, we can focus on sustainable solutions that rebuild the economy and make sure this situation doesn’t come back to bite us.

So, while I’d definitely agree the actions from the Administration haven’t been perfect (indeed, read my diary for more articles on this), I think they’ve been fairly effective considering what they’ve had to work with. Could it have been better? Sure, but all we can do from the armchair is make could’ve, would’ve, should’ve assumptions.

What turned this from being bad into a disaster?

(1) The fact that President Bush didn’t make Paulson publicly address/consider alternatives or engage Congressional Republicans

(2) The fact that many conservative pundits, bloggers,etc treated Paulson as God and essentially said “Paulson said we do this or we die” and acted accordingly.

(3) McCain has no real interest in capitalism–he doesn’t understand it and he doesn’t have strong inclinations about it.

I still think McCain will win in the end, because Obama is incompetent. If this was an election against a Bill Clinton clone, it would be a LANDSLIDE.

People saying Paulson should be fired are really saying Bush screwed this up big time!!!!

Which is true.

If Bush had included the House Republicans in some discussions, addressed their concerns, etc. the political mess could have been avoided.

Top down “do this or everyone dies” is no way to run anything. It doesn’t educate anyone. It doesn’t persuade anyone.

Worst roll-out of a plan EVER.

The Bush PR machine is certifiably incompetent.