Hank Paulson: Robbing Hood

Daddy Warbucks, Little Orphan Annie's wandering father, returned in the persona of Hank Paulson. Warbucks was phenomenally wealthy, as is Hank Paulson especially with your TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money. But it is there that the similarity ends.

Paulson has used your TARP money to bailout his friends, who are the senior executives of Wall Street banks, such as Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit, that have sold their toxic loans to the government. Having provided a brief three page summary of the treasury bailout and with a demand for no accounting, Hank Paulson and company gave away your tax-payer money.

Figures have recently been released that show where your TARP money went. The Treasury purchased $254 billion of troubled assets. These assets have a value of only $176 billion. That is a loss of $78 billion on these assets. This means that the Treasury—and it is your money--overpaid 45% for the assets. Paulson has shown that he is no coupon cutter. Paulson's net worth is approximately $700 million and this does not include his personal worth in Goldman Sachs Capital Partners Investment Funds such as the private funds for Goldman Sachs senior executives that invested in the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Paulson believes that since he can overpay for Big Macs you the taxpayer can overpay to bail out his friends.

This is the way Wall Street and Goldman Sachs operates in a reverse Robin Hood fashion: steal from the poor and give to the rich. After all who else can afford Goldman's fees.