1115.org

Just when you think you can see the bottom, el Presidente takes it to the next level down:

“He should be begging me!”

– An exasperated President Bush to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten on having to put on a hard sell to recruit Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson to become Treasury Secretary.

Clearly I’m no fan of Paulson, but expecting anyone to beg for the pleasure of selling retarded economic policy is a whole new record for self-unawareness from Bush.

The funny thing is that Paulson has taken to his new job like a pig to shit, equally at ease lying about the state of housing and the economy as well as ineffectually jaw-boning China over currency manipulation. Maybe he should have been begging, he was born for this.

In related housing/economy/China news, Easy Alan Greenspan wants in on Paulson’s turf:

Greenspan, who stepped down from the helm of the U.S. central bank in January 2006, said that as Fed chief he knew about questionable lending practices that were leaving subprime borrowers with adjustable rate loans vulnerable to harm from rising interest rates, but did not recognize those loans would trigger broader problems until fairly recently, CBS said.

“While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late,” Greenspan said. “I really didn’t get it until very late in 2005 and 2006.”

I’m starting to think that higher economics education went through a very rough patch during Paulson and Greenspan’s collegiate era.

And to round out the good news, it appears that China is acting on Paulson’s repeated hectoring. Just not exactly in the way he meant them to:

A sharp drop in foreign holdings of US Treasury bonds over the last five weeks has raised concerns that China is quietly withdrawing its funds from the United States, leaving the dollar increasingly vulnerable.

Heckuva job, morons.