Henry M Paulson

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, increasingly the point man for the Bush administration as it struggles to steady the economy, made an emergency trip to Capitol Hill on Wednesday seeking to quell a rebellion among conservatives over the plan to shore up struggling mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The response to the gravest financial crisis in generations has been engineered to a remarkable degree by a committee of three. From the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. to the takeovers of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and American International Group Inc., all the key decisions have been made by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Early Thursday, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson sipped Diet Coke in his office as four flat-screen computer monitors flashed the latest financial data from around the world. For months, Paulson had been running from crisis to crisis, engineering rescues for disintegrating firms. Now a cataclysm was enveloping global markets, triggering a run on money market funds that had been considered safe. Paulson decided the U.S. government must intervene, and fast. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S.

Despite all the constraints Congress supposedly wrapped around him, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson is about to become the most powerful mortgage financier of the modern era -- most likely of any era.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson had a stern message for more than two dozen of the nation's most powerful hedge fund managers gathered in the third-floor conference room near his office. Paulson told them it was time to begin regulating the opaque realm of hedge funds, reversing his long-held opposition. "You should not be thinking about how to fight it but how to make it work," he recounted telling them at the meeting last month. They were stunned.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson told unhappy congressional Democrats on Tuesday that, barring a new catastrophe, the Bush administration intended to stand pat on its existing effort to stabilize financial markets -- and leave the next stage of economic recovery to the new administration.

Many things that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson has said about the credit crunch and financial markets have come back to haunt him. Now many investors appear to expect a U.S. rescue of Citigroup Inc. -- just one week after Paulson sought to assure the American people that the banking system has "been stabilized." Citigroup shares dived $1.69, or 26.4%, to $4.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. says the economy is healthy, inflation seems to be under control and the U.S. should not perceive China as an economic enemy. After the Dow Jones industrials posted their worst weekly performance in more than four years, Paulson said in a television interview broadcast Sunday he felt good about the economy and discounted the risk of an economic downturn. "Markets never move in any one direction forever in a straight line.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. on Wednesday downplayed the mortgage-rate-freeze element of the Bush administration's program to help the sinking housing market, saying it wasn't the principal focus of the plan -- despite the raised hopes of some struggling homeowners.

It's practically part of the job description: Henry M. Paulson Jr., President Bush's choice for Treasury secretary, likely will soon find himself pledging to work on behalf of a strong dollar and a smaller government deficit. After all, how could a Treasury secretary support a weak dollar and profligate deficit spending? But circumstances are bound to conspire against Paulson, chairman of the investment house Goldman Sachs, whom Bush nominated Tuesday as his choice to replace John W. Snow.