A new face, an old story

Will Henry Paulson be good for the economy?  The stock market? Your pocketbook?  All of the above?

What about none of the above?  That’s what the respondents to a CNN Money poll seem to think this morning.  Whether or not the public knows the man well enough to judge, they know Bush well enough to doubt whether he’s now on board to excuse and obscure the cornucopia of corporate welfare that Bush calls an economic policy.  52% responded: none of the above.

“Bush could use a new spokesman for his economic record” understates another CNN analyst. Presumably that would be someone who is not a blind academic dogmatist and not instantly identifiable as a crook; someone like Goldman Sachs CEO Paulson perhaps, but it remains to be seen whether Paulson is a mouthpiece or someone who can or indeed wants to influence policy.  

With a $900 billion trade deficit, a weak dollar and a government spending as though there were no tomorrow, it’s hard to imagine that anything will change without our voting the Republicans out of office while we can.  It’s hard to imagine that Paulson, who earned $38 million last year, doesn’t like the economic status quo and the corporate feudalism that seems to be creating two different Americas: one for the Barons and another for the working serfs living on their estates.

David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's, says "I like tax cuts as much as anyone, but some control over the government spending would be nice.”  That’s not going to happen, Paulson or no Paulson.  Bush’s tax cuts and subsidies are the basis of his new feudal society. The rest of us are financing the class of nobles for whom the economy is just fine, thank you.