Hank Paulson

From The Desk of John Crudele (Within the Bada Bing)

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johncrudele.jpgDear Hank (or as the boys from the neighborhood call you, The Medicine Man),
How ya doin’?
Over the last 9 or so months, give or take a few sleeping fishes*, you did good. Maybe a little too good, if you catch my drift.
I’ll just get right to it—the boys: Sil, Cue ball Corzine, The Liquidator, me—don’t trust ya. And there’s talk that we’re gonna have to do something about it, this lack of trust. Are you picking up what I’m throwing down?
You, Hank, and your friends over on Broad Street—you’re all suspect. There are just too many ways for you and the Goldsteinowitzes to cheat the financial market. You’re in cahoots and that’s starting to create problems for me and my own. You don’t want to create problems for me and my own, do ya, Hank?
I put some of my boys on the job a few months back—I said “Get some answers so I don’t have to take out no made men.” They asked for some documents shredderfuckshitshredder—sorry, Tourette’s—from the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets—around these parts we’ve got a name for it—the Plunge Protection Team (I won’t get into how that name came about but I can tell you it had nothing to do with the WaPo; and also, that she was a most unsavory woman).

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    You Spin Me Right Round, Right Round, Like That Hank Paulson Twenty, Baby

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    HankPaulsonTwentyfixed.jpg
    Thanks to a reader with photoshop, here’s a non-reversed image of the Hank Paulson signed twenty dollar bill. (Our own graphics guy stopped answering our emails when we asked some questions about his girlfriend this morning.)

      It’s All About The Paulsons, Baby

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      HankPaulsonTwenty.jpg
      Here’s your first look at the Hank Paulson signed twenty dollar bill.
      We just took a look through our own wallets but found nothing but business cards of people we will never call, an IOU from a friend who mysteriously needed to borrow sixty bucks at 2:30 in the morning on Saturday night and the address of a book party for Leveraged Sell Out that we forgot to go to.
      Congrats to reader Kevin who has won the contest, and a drink with Bess Levin.
      Next contest: another drink with Bess for the person who can send us a photograph of the best illicit use of the Paulson Twenty. We’re thinking things that involve, say, ladies dancing, palms being greased or anything that requires rolling the bill into a tight tube. Email photos to tips@dealbreaker.com.

        Keeping It In The Family

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        HankPaulsonAgain.jpgSo who is the big shot who poinied up nearly $8 million for Hank Paulson’s Upper West Side digs? None other than another Goldman Sachs big, of course. The buyer was Goldman managing director Tony Lauto.
        Like everything else that seems to take place in 2006, it’s also still 2003. Haunting that apartment and the sale are the ghosts of Dick Grasso, Eliot Spitzer and the New York Stock Exchange.

        Despite a tremendous amount of interest in the old C.E.O.’s uptown-facing apartment, it was easy for Mr. Lauto to introduce himself. There was more, after all, than just Mr. Lauto’s current job at Goldman. His little brother happens to be John Lauto, the C.E.O. of Goldman’s stock specialist, Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, and a member of the New York Stock Exchange’s Director Candidate Recommendation Committee for 2006.
        Why might that matter? Before joining the Bush administration, Mr. Paulson was a NYSE board member who was loudly critical of former exchange chairman Richard Grasso’s compensation package. Goldman president John Thain was named as the stock exchange’s C.E.O. in December of 2003.

        Hank Paulson Sells $8 M. Condo To a Well-Connected Banker [New York Observer via Wall$treetFolly]

          Hank Paulson Delivers Another Blow to Sarbanes-Oxley

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          HankPaulsonAgain.jpgOur heads are still aching from drinking one (okay, three or four) too many margaritas in honor of Jeff Skilling, the guy at the helm when Enron hit the iceberg of its financial gambles who yesterday got hit with a sentence of 24-years or life (whichever comes first). So it is comforting this morning to know that it’s not just us tequila-quaffing kids who are skeptical about increasing the risk of criminal liability for American corporate executives.

          U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he is considering recommending changes to the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance law because its restrictions have overwhelmed some American companies.
          While the “net result” of stricter reporting standards for executives has been positive, Sarbanes-Oxley has also contributed to “an atmosphere that has made it more burdensome for companies to operate,” Paulson said in an interview today from Washington.
          “We’re going to need to look at how we can address some of these issues,” Paulson said. “This is something we’re giving a lot of thought to.”
          Paulson’s comments come as business groups press the Bush administration to loosen the Sarbanes-Oxley restrictions. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups say the law stifles innovation and puts corporate officials, who must certify the accuracy of their financial results, at risk of prison terms.
          “We as a country do as good a job as any nation of shining a light on a problem when a problem occurs,” Paulson said in the interview. “Oftentimes the pendulum will swing too far.”

          If he keeps this up, we’re going to start feeling bad about the whole “tree-hugger” thing.

          Paulson Says Sarbanes-Oxley Adds to Companies’ Burden           [Bloomberg]

            Paulson’s Move To DC Still Paying Off

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            Hank Paulson got a pretty sweet leaving package when he stepped down from running Goldman Sachs to take the job as George Bush’s Treasury Secretary. And now his move down to Washington, DC is looking even sweeter. Eight million dollars sweeter.

            U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., sold his 50th floor condominium near Manhattan’s Lincoln Center for almost $8 million, according to public records.
            Paulson paid a total of $2.88 million for two apartments he bought and combined on West 67th Street, one in 1996 and the other in 1998. Tax on the re-sale was about $112,000, according to the New York City Register.


            U.S. Treasury’s Paulson Sells New York Condo for $8 Million             [Bloomberg]

              Man of Steel At Treasury

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              Robert Steel.jpgIt’s all Goldman Sachs all the time at the Treasury Department these days. Former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson is bringing Goldman senior director Robert Steel on board the good ship Treasury as undersecretary for domestic finance.
              Steel started in the equities division at Goldman, and eventually rose to run the group. He was served on the management committee for years with Paulson. He rose close to the pinnacle of power at the firm as vice chairman. We’ve heard that he was one of those who pushed for changes at the NYSE to permit buy and sell orders for the most heavily traded stocks to pair up electronically, eliminating the middlemen of specialists and floor brokers. At the time, he was said to have urged Paulson to combat then NYSE chief Dick Grasso’s resistance to these changes.

              Bush to nominate Goldman’s Steel to Treasury post               [Reuters]