This is RICH!

China Shuns Paulson's Free Market Push as Meltdown Burns U.S.

By Zhao Yidi and Kevin Hamlin


Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Eighteen months ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told an audience at the Shanghai Futures Exchange that China risked trillions of dollars in lost economic potential unless it freed up its capital markets.

``An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention,'' Paulson said.

That advice rings hollow in China as Paulson plans a $700 billion rescue for U.S. financial institutions and the Securities and Exchange Commission bans short sales of insurers, banks and securities firms. Regulators in the fastest-growing major economy say they may ditch plans to introduce derivatives, and some company bosses are rethinking U.S. business models.

``The U.S. financial system was regarded as a model, and we tried our best to copy whatever we could,'' said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to China's central bank. ``Suddenly we find our teacher is not that excellent, so the next time when we're designing our financial system we will use our own mind more.''

The recent moves by Paulson, the former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., contradict what the U.S. told Asian governments over the past decade. Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia were urged to let unviable banks fail during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aCl7bFUJzWRk

FLB - we all know that Paulson was the Chairman of Goldman before he took the treasury job.

What many may not know is that he took $500 million with him.

My question is this - is his $500 million in Goldman stock?

Is all this to bail out Paulson and his buddies so they don't lose all their money???

Err, so how much of Paulson's $500M trickled down to the rest of us?

Let me check under the couch cushions...I may have a something that trickled down stuck in there...

I think I saw some of Paulson's riches trickle out my exhaust pipe the other day as reconstituded hydrocarbons that I purchased with my $6700 original purchase of Goldman stock 4 years ago. I think it returned a dividend of about half a tank of gas..... (maybe I'm being optimistic here) that I paid $3.98 a gallon for.

I'm thinking that Paulson left you off the Christmas card list because you got away with an actual profit on the investment in his company - assuming of course that you got the $6700 back plus the dividend. If he had somehow wrangled that money away from you, you might rate a second or two of thought passing through his great mind...

Yeah, I killed on this deal. My $6700 investment netted me a return of $13.80 per year (total return of $55.21), or an annual interest return of 0.000123% on my money.

Guess that makes me a stock wizard in that I didn't lose it all. Somehow, I'll bet they made a dime or two more on my money. When I add in the stock trade fees, I netted $45 over four years, now I have to pay Capital Gains on that money.....

Yahoo.......

Did any of you see Jon Stewarts "The Daily Show" that he did on Paulson. It was funny and painful at the same time.

Just a few weeks previous to the crash he was saying how good the economy was doing and how solid it was. At that time there were plenty of posts on this BOATING board about the coming train wreck.

Yeah, and I'm flipping through the channels tonight, and I stop at one news channel, can't remember which, and the dude is saying how congress is real happy that GWB picked this guy for the job, and the American people have a lot of confidence in Mr. Paulson.

You can have confidence in someone, it's pretty easy. Having confidence that they'll do the right thing is another level.

You think maybe Paulson and company are trying to pull the world's biggest pigeon drop.