New Treasury Chief Former Offensive Tackle, Still Birdwatcher

GWB has scored a phenomenal coup by persuading Goldman Sachs Chief Hank Poulson as the new Secretary of the Treasury. The much-maligned departing John Snow was a clubfoot at promoting the fantastic growth of the US economy, over 5% the last quarter, and even though the US economy was growing at an equal rate to Bob Rubin's pace during the Clinton boom during Snow's tenure, the former CSX chief never caught on with the Wall Street crowd, nor very much with his own corporate crowd, for that matter. Plus his hectoring of China and other countries won him few fans abroad.

The Financial Times has a good overview of his career, including his lowly origins as an Illinois farmboy near Burlington, his farm career after he made his millions, his presidency of The Nature Conservancy, which buys properties for wildlife to flourish on, and his big spread in this May's Vanity Fair green issue as an Enviro-Don on Wall Street. Plus his legendary exploits as a Dartmouth offensive lineman [my own former position] and subsequent climb to the top of the biggest brownshoe operation on the Street. [BTW, another Illinois farmboy genius is WStreet whiz and NYSE prez John Thaines{who appears to have Abe Lincoln's Marfan configuration}, still a third is Gore-recount chief lawyer John Boies at Wood Crutcher from Marengo, where we bought our amazing Himalayan cat with an IQ of close to 50!]

But I digress.

NYT Op-Ed Chief Fraud Paul Krugboy, who hated Rubin in the '80s and Laura Dyson in the '90s [along with Robert Reich an object of the Krugman BS-spew machine], must be rotated at several thousand RPM as he sees himself eclipsed again [he regards himself as a planetary object] by truly competent people tempermentally adapted to life in the BIG TIME and FAST LANE, unlike his own marginal carping whingeing self.

Sorry for another digression, but blogs must move on.

The amazing performance of the American economy whose growth has surpassed the highest even during the Dot-Com Bubble of the nineties has got to be cooled with those rods they use in nuclear plants, but not by higher taxes, says Greg Mankiw. However, the US real estate market is beginning to soften, according to this Sunday's Barron's, so the awesome US consumption patterns often spurred by refinancing in a bonkers real estate upswing is bound to plateau, if not begin to crater.

Lots of Goldman Sachs types are rubbing their heads wondering why he did it, but Poulson may have finally been tipped by Josh Bolten, new White House Chief of Staff and former GSachs VP. They must have promised Old Hank a Rose Garden to get into the dead-in-the-water administration in the Doldrums except for a booming economy.

Can the US continue to grow and spend its way toward a Republican re-election in '08? Poulson may be the ticket, if it can be done.