So, Where Is Hank Paulson At?

As Ben Bernanke received all the heat today for his abysmal analysis of both his work and where we should go in our economy (Targeting Social Security and Medicaid, WTF?) , a name popped up into my mind that has been able to vanish from the minds of most, even the piously political.

Because as Bernanke was receiving all the heat today, a certain guy by the name of Hank Paulson has gone back to filling his slimy pockets without being held accountable. Because Lord knows how he was Golden Sachs willing meal ticket as the Treasury Secretary.

For example, this story wasn't talked about as much when this story broke over a month ago

But it turns out that Paulson just happened to be in Moscow at the same time that Goldman’s board of directors was having dinner there with Mikhail Gorbachev. (You know, as one does.) Take it away, Andrew:

When Paulson learned that Goldman’s board would be in Moscow at the same time as him, he had [Treasury chief of staff] Jim Wilkinson organize a meeting with them. Nothing formal, purely social — for old times’ sake.

For the next hour, Paulson regaled his old friends with stories about his time in Treasury and his prognostications about the economy. They questioned him about the possibility of another bank blowing up, like Lehman, and he talked about the need for the government to have the power to wind down troubled firms, offering a preview of his upcoming speech.

How on earth did Paulson think this was OK? Goldman Sachs was a hugely powerful for-profit investment bank, and there he is, giving private chapter and verse on his opinions about the US and global economy, talking about internal Treasury matters, and previewing an upcoming (and surely market-moving) speech. All in secret, at a “social event” which somehow got kept off his official calendar. Oh, yes, and one other thing — the whole shebang took place in the Moscow Marriott Grand Hotel, in the context of Goldman directors joking about how all the Moscow hotels were surely bugged.

This is sleazy in the extreme, and will only serve to heighten suspicions that Paulson’s Treasury was rigging the game in favor of Goldman all along. (It’s also a bit peculiar, to say the least, that the only two times Paulson met with private-sector boards he was out of the country, and arguably outside US jurisdiction.)

Things like a secret meeting with his former company and telling government secrets to them shouldn't have Hank Paulson evaporate from our minds at all.

So where is King Hank, who wasn't going to mind at all if the TARP bill was just 3 pages if it was fully up to him (though the quality of it felt like it was three pages), now?

Well, he is now a distinguished visiting fellow at the John Hopkins University's Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Bernard Schwartz Forum on (get this) "Constructive Capitalism."

There must be a new definition for "constructive" that John Hopkins is going by nowadays, because how Paulson could be apart of anything that is "constructive capitalism" is about as laughable as believing that Tom Friedman is one of our great voices in America.

Oh, and what else is Paulson doing with his time to be even more shady than he was in the worst Administration ever? He's writing a supposedly tell all book called "On The Brink."

It really is quite funny how Paulson has been even more invisible than Bush since leaving office. He hasn't even gone on Fixed Propaganda or its "Free-market/Imus nutcase" brother network from what I know of. And really, his lack of public sight shouldn't be so funny.

Because he is hiding for how much of a crook he is, and how much damage he has done to our nation's economy.

But while he is able to abscond around in D.C. and anywhere else he wants right now, Bernanke is the one taking the heat that they both so richly deserve.