{"id":191508,"date":"2009-08-08T20:03:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-09T01:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/08\/how-is-hank-paulson-like-bernie-madoff\/"},"modified":"2009-08-08T20:03:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-09T01:03:00","slug":"how-is-hank-paulson-like-bernie-madoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/08\/how-is-hank-paulson-like-bernie-madoff\/","title":{"rendered":"How is Hank Paulson Like Bernie Madoff?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, Eric Falkenstein has the following take on Bernie Madoff<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Clearly, he understood phone calls are best. People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted<\/span>, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes<\/span>. A phone conversation can always be disavowed, you just say you were talking about last weekend’s bar mitzvah.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Felix Salmon, who has one of the sharpest minds in finance, notes a parallel with Hank Paulson<\/a> in his exchange with Representative Jackie Speier:<\/p>\n

Jackie Speier (D-Calif)<\/b>: Do you use email?<\/p>\n

Hank Paulson<\/b>: Do I use email? No, I don\u2019t use it, personally.<\/p>\n

JS<\/b>: You don\u2019t use it personally, or professionally?<\/p>\n

HP<\/b>: Yeah, I just don\u2019t. So I\u2019ve never used it for any business communications. Just never use it.<\/p>\n

JS<\/b>: So while you were secretary of the Treasury you never used email?<\/p>\n

HP<\/b>: No.<\/p>\n

JS<\/b>: How did you communicate with people?<\/p>\n

HP<\/b>: Telephone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This does not prove that he is a dishonest person, though being a former head of Goldman Sachs certainly implies it, and as someone born in 1946, I understand how this might be a generational thing, but as someone who worked in finance, the value, and risks, of having a clear and incontrovertible copy of his discussions had to be clear to him.<\/p>\n

If I were a betting man, I’d go with the fact that he knew that he broke the law regularly, and wanted deniability.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, Eric Falkenstein has the following take on Bernie Madoff: Clearly, he understood phone calls are best. People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes. A phone conversation can always be disavowed, you just say you were talking about …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1004,1245,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-finance","category-honesty","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}