Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson, Jr. (born March 28, 1946) served as the 74th United States Treasury Secretary. He previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs. In 2008, Time named Paulson as a runner-up for its Person of the Year 2008, saying, with reference to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008: "if there is a face to this financial debacle, it is now his."
Early life and family
He was born in Palm Beach, Florida, to Marianna (née Gallauer) and Henry Merritt Paulson, a wholesale jeweler. He was raised in Barrington Hills, Illinois, as a Christian Scientist. Paulson attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.
A star athlete at Barrington High School, Paulson was a champion wrestler and stand-out football player, graduating in 1964. Paulson received his B.A. in English from Dartmouth College in 1968; at Dartmouth he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Alpha Epsilon and he was an All-Ivy, All-East, and honorable mention All American as an offensive lineman.
He met his wife Wendy during his senior year. The couple has two adult children, Henry Merritt Paulson III, more commonly known as Merritt Paulson, and Amanda Clark Paulson. The Paulsons became grandparents in June 2007. They maintain homes in Washington, DC, and Barrington Hills, Illinois.
Paulson received his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School in 1970.
Early career
Paulson was Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at The Pentagon from 1970 to 1972. He then worked for the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon, serving as assistant to John Ehrlichman from 1972 to 1973, during the events of the Watergate scandal for which Ehrlichman was convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Goldman Sachs
He joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, working in the firm's Chicago office under James P. Gorter. He became a partner in 1982. From 1983 until 1988, Paulson led the Investment Banking group for the Midwest Region, and became managing partner of the Chicago office in 1988. From 1990 to November 1994, he was co-head of Investment Banking, then, Chief Operating Officer from December 1994 to June 1998; eventually succeeding Jon Corzine (now Governor of New Jersey) as its chief executive. His compensation package, according to reports, was US $37 million in 2005, and US $16.4 million projected for 2006. His net worth has been estimated at over US $700 million.
Paulson has personally built close relations with China during his career. In July 2008 it was reported by The Daily Telegraph that: "Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has intimate relations with the Chinese elite, dating from his days at Goldman Sachs when he visited the country more than 70 times."
In 2004, at the request of the major Wall Street investment houses—including Goldman Sachs, then headed by Paulson—the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission agreed unanimously to release the major investment houses from the net capital rule, the requirement that their brokerages hold reserve capital that limited their leverage and risk exposure. The complaint put forth by the investment banks was of increasingly onerous regulatory requirements—in this case, not U.S. regulator oversight, but European Union regulation of the foreign operations of US investment groups. In the immediate lead-up to the decision, EU regulators also acceded to US pressure, and agreed not to scrutinize foreign firms' reserve holdings if the SEC agreed to do so instead. The 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, however, put the parent holding company of each of the big American brokerages beyond SEC oversight. In order for the agreement to go ahead, the investment banks lobbied for a decision that would allow "voluntary" inspection of their parent and subsidiary holdings by the SEC.
During this repeal of the net capital rule, SEC Chairman William H. Donaldson agreed to the establishment of a risk management office that would monitor signs of future problems. This office was eventually dismantled by Chairman Christopher Cox, after discussions with Paulson. According to the New York Times, "While other financial regulatory agencies criticized a blueprint by Treasury Secretary Mr. Paulson proposing to reduce their stature — and that of the S.E.C. — Mr. Cox did not challenge the plan, leaving it to three former Democratic and Republican commission chairmen to complain that the blueprint would neuter the agency."
In late September 2008, Chairman Cox and the other Commissioners agreed to end the 2004 program of voluntary regulation.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury
Paulson was nominated on May 30, 2006, by U.S. President George W. Bush to succeed John Snow as the Treasury Secretary. On June 28, 2006, he was confirmed by the United States Senate to serve in the position. Paulson was officially sworn in at a ceremony held at the Treasury Department on the morning of July 10, 2006.
Each of Paulson's three immediate predecessors as CEO of Goldman Sachs — Jon Corzine, Stephen Friedman, and Robert Rubin — left the company to serve in government: Corzine as a U.S. Senator (later Governor of New Jersey), Friedman as chairman of the National Economic Council (later chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) under President George W. Bush, and Rubin as both chairman of the NEC and later Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton.
Paulson identified the wide gap between the richest and poorest Americans as an issue on his list of the country's four major long-term economic issues to be addressed, highlighting the issue in one of his first public appearances as Secretary of Treasury.
Paulson conceded that chances were slim for agreeing on a method to reform Social Security financing, but said he would keep trying to find bipartisan support for it.
He also helped to create the Hope Now Alliance to help struggling homeowners during the subprime mortgage crisis.
Paulson was known to have persuaded President George W. Bush to allow him to spearhead U.S.-China relations and initiated and led the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, a forum and mechanism under which the two countries addressed global areas of immediate and long-term strategic and economic interest.
Notable statements
In Spring 2007, Secretary Paulson told an audience at the Shanghai Futures Exchange that "An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention."
In August 2007, Secretary Paulson explained that U.S. subprime mortgage fallout remained largely contained due to the strongest global economy in decades.
On July 20, 2008, after the failure of Indymac Bank, Paulson reassured the public by saying, “it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”
On August 10, 2008, Secretary Paulson told NBC’s Meet the Press that he had no plans to inject any capital into Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. On September 7, 2008, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into conservatorship.
U.S. government economic bailout of 2008
Paulson was the designated leader of the Bush Administration's efforts in 2008 to nationalize the cost of bad loans made by financial institutions.
Through unprecedented intervention by the U.S. Treasury, Paulson led government efforts which he said were aimed at avoiding a severe economic slowdown. He pushed through the conservatorship of government agency mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Working with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, he influenced the decision to create a credit facility (bridge loan & warrants) of US$85 billion to American International Group so it would avoid filing bankruptcy.
In late September 2008, Paulson, along with Bernanke, led the effort to help financial firms by agreeing to use US$700 billion dollars to purchase bad debt they had incurred. He faced criticism from economists for initially refusing to consider injecting large amounts of cash into financial institutions directly by purchasing stock, an option which other countries in similar circumstances had pursued. This was the option favored by Bernanke, and the one that was eventually followed.
On September 19, 2008, Paulson called for the U.S. government to use hundreds of billions of Treasury dollars to help financial firms clean up nonperforming mortgages threatening the liquidity of those firms. Because of his leadership and public appearances on this issue, the press labeled these measures the "Paulson financial rescue plan" or simply the Paulson Plan.
With the passage of H.R. 1424, Paulson became the manager of the United States Emergency Economic Stabilization fund.
As Treasury Secretary, he also sat on the newly established Financial Stability Oversight Board that oversees the Troubled Assets Relief Program.
Documents obtained by government watchdog group Judicial Watch reveal that in an October 13, 2008, meeting with executives from 9 major American banks, Paulson told bankers that they would be forced to accept government bailout money, whether they wanted it or not. One of the documents, a talking points memo, gave bankers the ultimatum: "If a capita
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