The Henry Paulson Parade

It's a busy week at the US Treasury as Paulson wraps up his Russia-EU tour. His team at home base has been busy uncovering more aliases for the Pakistani trust funds that lent heavy financing to Al-Qeada. Under Secretary McCormick gives the potentially $10 billion dollar World Bank Clean Technology Fund.

But Henry isn't a guy to be out done by his people. He's grabbing headlines as usual. And since we're not very worried about technology or Al-Qeada right now his cutting to the chase. The hints of this plan are in the

HP-1064: Remarks by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
on the U.S., the World Economy and Markets before the Chatham House

But the implications are pretty big. As Bloomberg points out what's coming is a drastic reworking of the laws that govern how money to bail out financial institutions that are part of the Federal Reserve system. Putting the final decision to cut a tax payer check to bail out a company like Bear Stearns. But as he says it he enforces the fact that everyone thinks this was a good thing to do.

But he's really setting the stage for the aftermath of this

"We will need to give our regulators additional emergency
authority to limit temporary disruptions,'' Paulson said. "Any
commitment of government support should be an extraordinary event
that requires the engagement of the Executive Branch.''

Because not everyone did think it was a good idea, and when the smoke clears this and the other bail outs are going to be put under the microscope and, at least a few heads will have to roll.