Ta-Ta, Hank Paulson

Hank Paulson has disappeared, hopefully forever, from the global scene. The high school football star rose to the top of the Treasury and Goldman Sachs, stopping along the way in the Nixon Administration.

Oh, you don't remember? Paulson was the chief aid to Ehrlichman, the man imprisoned for planning and executing Watergate. Later, Paulson fell in with the Chinese, like many Nixonians, and even convinced them, in a feat worthy of Theodore Roosevelt, to make the Yunan Valley a protected reserve. When he was chairman of Goldman Sachs in the mid-zeros, the Bush Administration hired him to become the Secretary of the Treasury. A handsome job. As per the ethics requirement, Paulson sold his Goldman stake and made $200,000,000. Cha-ching.

After the financial crisis struck, he presented a three-page plan to Congress for 700 billion dollars. The bill gave him immunity from prosecution and said his decisions on how to spend the money could not 'be reviewed by any court of law.' When Congressmen, particularly Republicans, revolted, he told them that in the absence of the money there would be martial law. Congress agreed to the bill after it was stuffed with over $100 billion dollars of pork-barrel spending.

Paulson ultimately dispensed with half of the $700 billion incomprehensibly. Banks and investors pocketed the money, or Paulson just wiped his ass with it. He called this the TARP. The original purpose was to buy up bad assets at banks, but Paulson changed his mind about that - probably after he realized that there are about a quadrillion bad assets on the computer networks.

Hank Paulson bested J.P Morgan.