Good ol' Matt Taibbi - a man not known for mincing words - eviscerates Paulsen and a Wall Street Journal lackey as only he can:
It was, apparently, this quote from Evan Newman that made Matt go tornado on his ass:
Hank Paulson is a national hero. I said it last October and I'm sticking by it. And now, there's actual evidence to back me up. The TARP bailout worked. The Wall Street crisis is over.
A few choice Matt Quotes below the fold.
Few people have built-in "Mouth Howitzers" like Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and he let fly a barrage of fire in his alternet rant. Let's just start out with the first paragraph of fun:
Can you imagine what a craven, bumlicking ass-goblin you'd have to be to get a job working for the Wall Street Journal, not mention up front that you used to be a Goldman, Sachs managing director, and then write a lengthy article calling your former boss a "national hero" -- in the middle of a sweeping financial crisis, one in which half the world is in a panic and the unemployment rate just hit a 25-year high? Behavior like this, you usually don't see it outside prison trusties who spend their evenings shining the guards' boots. I can't even think of a political press secretary who would sink that low. Hank Paulson, a hero? Are you fucking kidding us?
Craven, bumlicking ass-goblin is, well... let's just say "very descriptive" and leave it at that for now.
Matt points out the obvious here, and while he cites numerous examples of Hank Paulson's many epic FAILS, he writes with a delicate balance of just enough juvenile style, skill and humor to make the piece a delight to read:
Even if it weren't about five years too early to make any kind of judgment at all about whether or not TARP helped, the notion that Henry Paulson is a hero is complete and utter madness because TARP would never have been necessary if someone, anyone who wasn't a greed-addled incompetent like Paulson had actually been regulating the economy in the last years of the Bush adminstration. If anyone besides Paulson had been running Goldman Sachs earlier in this decade -- if a person with a serious brain injury had been in his place, for instance, or a horse, or a head of lettuce -- we'd all be better off today, because there wouldn't be so many toxic Goldman-underwritten mortgage-backed CDOs on the market. We, all of us, are paying the freight for assholes like Paulson, and like you, for that matter. And while we're getting over it, slowly, you're really not helping when you open your mouth and pat yourself on the back for all the good deeds you've done. Spare, us, okay? Just give it up.
A horse or a head of lettuce, indeed! Go get 'em, Matt!