On the unfortunate case of Hank Paulson...

Reputation is a precious thing, in which great men (and women alike) would do their utmost to preserve. Just look at the defense from Greenspan (from being hailed as the best Fed chairman, to the enabler to the current subprime mortgage mess), and Rubin (from being the steady hand as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, to the Greenspan conspirator in deregulation of Wall Street).

Albeit claims of no regret, no doubt the current Hank Paulson shoots himself in his foot for taking up the short tenure in the sunset Bush administration as a boost to his resume and credentials, only to see the markets going up in flame under his watch. It must be painful, to be seen from the wise, great chairman of Goldman Sachs with bulging wealth, to being a flip-flop, clueless Treasury Secretary.

I won't fault him as much to being clueless. In fact, I don't think anyone has any clue or idea on how to fix the current mess, which is so fluid and changing daily. Still, as a senior figure in the Treasury who's in charge, one would expect or hope him to have at least some idea on how to fix our current mess. Perhaps it's too much to ask for it, since Paulson obviously has no silver bullet or magical pill to make the bogeyman go away. In fact, he's like a one-man-band firefighter, leaping with a hose, jumping from one fire to the next, without any idea of where the next explosion might be, or if he has enough water to hose the fire.

Hell, if you ask me whether I worry about the current economy or not, I would certainly say yes. But there's nothing much I can do about it, so I might as well watch it with the cool, clinical detachment, as if I'm watching the fish in the fishbowl swimming madly while the water is boiling.

I hope the economy will get better soon (heck, haven't we had thought things would turn around by mid- to end-2008 when subprime mess broke, and the aggregated corporate writedowns hit $300 billion mark?!?). Otherwise, it'll delay a more major advertising push of our business in Asia for yet another year.