Hammering "the Hammer"

Hank "the Hammer" Paulson gets nailed in Alan Blinder's column Missing the Target with $700 Billion. Blinder supported both the creation of the TARP (troubled assets relief program) and the government purchase and refinancing of troubled mortgages. But now he says Paulson has failed to implement either, and done so in a way that is troubling.

I had given Paulson the benefit of the doubt for failing fast, not flailing.
But now that we've seen how the government treated the automakers, at a time when even Toyota can't sell cars, it is puzzling to look back at how gently, and generously, the government dealt with banks. Blinder's column shows the fealty that Wall Street now commands in Washington. Maybe he should've been reading Peter Galuszka from the start.

Michael Fitzgerald

Michael Fitzgerald writes about innovation and other big ideas in business for publications like the New York Times, The Economist, Fast Company, Inc. and CIO. He’s worked as a writer or editor at Red Herring, ZDNet, TechTV and Computerworld, and has received numerous awards as a writer and editor. Most recently, his piece on the hacker collective the l0pht won the 2008 award for best trade piece from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He was also a 2007 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science and Religion.

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