Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics ( Paulson In Constant Contact With Goldman During Crisis)

[girl gone mad]

Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/business/09paulson.html?_r=2&ref=business">The New York Times

Before he became President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary in 2006, Henry M. Paulson Jr. agreed to hold himself to a higher ethical standard than his predecessors. He not only sold all his holdings in Goldman Sachs, the investment bank he had run, but also specifically said that he would avoid any substantive interaction with Goldman executives for his entire term unless he first obtained an ethics waiver from the government.

But today, seven months after Mr. Paulson left office, questions are still being asked about his part in decisions last fall to prop up the teetering financial system with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, including aid that directly benefited his former firm. Testifying on Capitol Hill last month, he was grilled about his relationship with Goldman.

(snip)

Mr. Paulson did not say when he received a waiver, but copies of two waivers he received — from the White House counsel’s office and the Treasury Department — show they were issued on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 2008.

That date was in the middle of the most perilous week of the financial crisis and a day after the government agreed to lend $85 billion to the American International Group, which used the money to pay off Goldman and other big banks that were financially threatened by A.I.G.’s potential collapse.

(snip)

While Mr. Paulson spoke to many Wall Street executives during that period, he was in very frequent contact with Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, according to a copy of Mr. Paulson’s calendars acquired by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.

During the week of the A.I.G. bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Blankfein spoke two dozen times, the calendars show, far more frequently than Mr. Paulson did with other Wall Street executives.

On Sept. 17, the day Mr. Paulson secured his waivers, he and Mr. Blankfein spoke five times. Two of the calls occurred before Mr. Paulson’s waivers were granted.

[ixion]

1. Epic Ethics FAIL

Paulson was the inside guy on the heist.

[Wednesdays]

2. K&R

:kick:

[notesdev]

3. "tested ethics"??

Is that what they call racketeering these days?

[DCKit]

4. It's the difference between being the banker and the bank robber.

It must really suck to be one of the bunch that expected Gramps and Gidget to pick up where BushCo* left off - suddenly their asses are catching a breeze and the current Administration isn't going out of it's way to provide a blanket.