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Henry Paulson

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Henry Paulson

Paulson is in the unique position, as U.S. Treasury Secretary, of heading the gargantuan cleanup of a financial mess that has enmeshed his former firm, Goldman Sachs (GS). (Paulson was Goldman's CEO from 1998 to 2006.) On Paulson's watch, Goldman was one of the five Wall Street firms that pushed to be exempted from bank holding companies' restrictive debt ratios in April 2004. As Treasury Secretary, Paulson attempted piecemeal fixes to individual credit flare-ups like Bear Stearns and Fannie/Freddie before coming to the conclusion that a comprehensive solution involving quasi-nationalization of nine major U.S. banks and coordination with financial ministers of the world's richest countries was needed. A spokeswoman at the Treasury commented in an email: "All of the Department's efforts have been focused on the economy and financial markets broadly, not on individual firms. Even the actions we took related to specific firms (Bear Stearns, AIG) were in the context of broader market stability."

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