Future of United States in Hands of Two Dartmouth Kids (and a Harvard)
Can three men really put the economy back together? Of course not. But to a large degree, it’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, and President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Timothy Geithner who are engineering our response to the Market Meltdown™.
But what do we know about these men? Can we find out anything about them from the various newspaper profiles they’ve appeared in this week?
Um, yeah. We can find out a lot about them. But I’m only going to note their college affiliations: Paulson is Dartmouth 68′ and Harvard business ‘70. Bernanke is Harvard ‘75 and MIT ‘79 (econ PhD). Geithner is Dartmouth ‘83.
I know what you’re thinking: “But Harvard’s only a lesser Ivy.” Not to worry; McCain is pitching in.
In case you haven’t been reading the newspaper or watching television, the startled-looking bald man in the above picture is Paulson.
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September 27th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Paulson spoke at Dartmouth’s Commencement in 2007. It was terrible — like a bad business PowerPoint presentation. His bald, vein-adorned head is impressive, though.
Let’s not forget that Paulson is in the process of bailing out the company for which he served as CEO for years (Goldman Sachs). Must be a sweet deal.
Socialism is cool so long as it’s for the rich.
September 27th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
“D’07″ is clearly a socialist idiot. If he knew anything worth a shit about this whole issue, he’d know that GS doesn’t need ‘bailing out.’ It’s not like Paulson used to run AIG/Lehman or some shit like that. D’07 probably works at Merrill and is just pissed to be fired, which is probably better than going to work for BofA.
Anyone who wants to listen to Hank’s speech can go here: http://media.dartmouth.edu/~pubs/views-paulson.mp3
September 27th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Even a socialist idiot knows that no company exists in a vacuum. Goldman Sachs is prepared to enormously benefit from the bailout.
Spending nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money to reward the hubris of greedy Wall Street morons is indeed socialism for the rich, a sweet deal for Hank Paulson and his friends.
September 27th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I don’t see how your assumptions that D’07 is a socialist idiot and that he works for Merrill and finds BoA beneath him could possibly strike you as consistent.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Let’s not forget Bernanke chaired Princeton’s econ department for a decade
September 27th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Bernanke, of course, was a Professor at Princeton before taking on his present job in Washington.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:11 am
GS absolutely would benefit. Their former CEO is essentially giving them a huge amount of subsidized credit at a time when they can only get cash on very unfavorable terms, as they did from Warren Buffet. I imagine hedgehog, like his co-workers, knows this and is trying to con the public into sending American workers the bill for his salary. What they want is corporate welfare.
Better to let the banks fail or come close and then buy them out wholesale with the bludgeon of bankruptcy over their head. We should also nullify the scam mortgage contracts and renegotiate them on reasonable terms. That would both penalize the scammers rather than taxpayers and go the root of the problem to give some chance that the crisis will go away rather than continue for years as more and more people default.
September 28th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
looks like Paulson is giving a talk at Georgetown in that picture…gross.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Ok, you lefties obviously never took an econ class because otherwise you wouldn’t have these pedantic misconceptions of situation we’re in. Firstly, this isn’t just Wall Street’s problem, it’s EVERYONE’S problem. If the credit markets collapse,then business won’t be able to borrow money to fund their operations. That means that in two weeks, you see a good portion of major manufacturers close down and lay off their workers. Moreover, this is not $700 billion of taxpayer dollars being spent, it is being used to buy assets that are (for the moment) undervalued and considered toxic by the market. Chances are that the taxpayers will actually reap a major windfall from this entire plan. Wall Street however, is paying a terrible long term price by having to undergo serious new regulation. Goldman Sachs suffered THE MOST because they were the one bank that acted smart, but now they’re getting hit like everyone else.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
if the assets are undervalued and whoever buys them will reap a major windfall, why don’t you invest in them? why don’t large investment funds or sovereign wealth funds buy them up at whatever price the US Treasury is going to pay? this is probably going to end up as a plain and simple subsidy to wall street, and most academic economists have said so. that something must be done to forestall a credit crunch wiping out new investment in other sectors is true enough, but there are real distributional issues involved in this and Wall St. is trying to terrorize the public into agreeing to shoulder the costs of this before anyone realizes what’s happening.
That you speak so melodramatically of millionaires and billionaires “paying a terrible price” is indicative of how far removed from reality you are and should give you some clue as to why the rest of the country despises you.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Wow, without anything else to reference, I would probably call harvard 05 a self-righteous liberal prick.
What was “melodramatic” about saying Wall Street is paying a price? A majority of the people losing their jobs are not millionaires or billionaires. In fact, they’re probably your former classmates.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:43 am
At the very least i want you champagne socialists to admit the fact that doing nothing will plunge this country into a 10 year recession – the academic economists believe this, they just think it’s good in the long run. I on the other hand recognize that if this country goes through a major economic downturn, we are going to see Congressional legislation reminiscent of the New Deal, which is far worse than any kind of Wall Street bailout. With regards to why i wouldn’t buy the toxic assets, you’ve obviously never heard the old Wall Street adage, “The market can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent.”
September 29th, 2008 at 5:35 am
Paulson is absolutely right. harvard05 has no clue at all what is going on in the financial world right now
September 30th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Doing nothing will plunge the country into a 10-year recession, but it might readjust, especially with smart legislation. A $700-billion bailout combined with an expensive war and an impending social security crisis (causing the national debt to balloon, devaluing the dollar, and jeopardizing national security) will in all likelihood avert the impending doom for now and make it infinitely worse sometime later in the century — the kind of selfish thinking that got us here in the first place!
September 30th, 2008 at 10:10 am
P.S. The main opponents of the Wall Street bailout in Congress are free-market ideological Republicans, not “champagne socialists.”
Yes, Paulson, this is everybody’s problem — that’s why plutocracy isn’t fun for the rest of us.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I want a bailout.
October 6th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I’m hoping with all my heart that “Paulson” is, in fact, Hank Paulson, who has understood the importance of leaving explanatory comments on a post from a blog dedicated to porn jokes/the Ivy League during this time of great economic peril.