Henry Paulson, Would You Please Go Now

“I think the danger is to just look through that lens, to lose a sense of perspective and rush toward harsh regulations that are unnecessary. Some regulation will be necessary, some changes in accounting rules.” -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, after a previous Wall Street scandal.

Please, folks, let's get real here and demand that Henry Paulson move along. His kind of self-serving leadership is what got us in to the mess we are in now. His first instinct when Lehman Bros. and AIG began to unravel was to protect his friends first. His instinct now is to save his own reputation which upon close examination, needs a good scrubbing. I know I need a bath just thinking about the rhetorical jibberish he's been spouting over the past couple of weeks (a "bail out" is now a "rescue?" Are you kidding me?)

The fact is that a wolf is not what we need guarding the hen house any longer. Where is Ralph Nader when we need him? Or, a successor to his early approaches of holding powerful people accountable (cira 1970; not the Ralph Nader of 1998).

Our Congress is doing a good job of asking tough questions. I am glad they stalled for a few days to allow some of the Paulson-engineered fog to clear. I am equally pleased to see the U.S. Senate approve a bill that makes a good deal more sense than the first one even though it is far from perfect. Naturally, every American should be looking very closely at this bill as, at the end of the day, it was passed by a chamber that is comprised of some of the richest people in the world.

Our media needs to continue to ask tough questions of people like Mr. Paulson and our President, who looks more like a cooked duck than a lame one these days. The only reporter out there asking the tough questions so far is Lou Dobbs of CNN. He knows Wall Street better than almost any reporter. He's been calling for Mr. Paulson's resignation for days. Perhaps someone is listening?