New Treasury Secretary Channels Paul Krugman

Posted on Aug 1, 2006

From turkishdailynews.com.tr

President Bush and his newly appointed secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson.

Bush’s new secretary of the Treasury, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, said in his first public remarks since taking office that he recognized the economy was not benefitting all Americans.

That’s quite an understatement—as Paul Krugman made abundantly clear in a 2002 N.Y. Times Magazine essay—but for a Bush appointee, it was a hell of an admission.

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N.Y. Times:

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., delivering his first public remarks since taking office last month, pledged today to work with Democrats to revamp Social Security and Medicare, and in a gesture aimed at Bush administration critics he said he recognized that the economy was not benefiting all Americans.

“Amid this country’s strong economic expansion, many Americans simply aren’t feeling the benefits,” Mr. Paulson said in a speech at Columbia Business School. “Many aren’t seeing significant increases in their take-home pay. Their increases in wages are being eaten up by high energy prices and rising health care costs, among others.”

It was a somewhat unusual concession from an administration that has spoken only glowingly of recent economic gains and has generally joined with Republicans in Congress in dismissing Democratic concerns about growing economic equality in the United States as “class warfare.”

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