Paulson to the rescue

摘要

He may be an unpopular lame-duck president, but George Bush can still pull off the odd coup. Despite a stalled domestic agenda and a reputation for disdaining economic policy, he has convinced a true Wall Street titan to join his team. On May 30th Hank Paulson, head of Goldman Sachs, America's most successful investment bank, was nominated to succeed John Snow as treasury secretary, Mr Snow's departure surprised no one. For months White House officials have been dropping none-too-subtle hints that he was on the way out, deemed, somewhat unfairly, to be an ineffective salesman of the virtues of Bushonomics. But Mr Paulson's appointment came as a shock. It was well known that the White House had been trying to lure Goldman's boss to be treasury secretary, but he was said to have refused several times, not least because the Bush team appeared to have downgraded the role of finance minister to a marketing job.