Reuters reports today that "The incoming Treasury secretary, Paulson was awarded $18.7 mill bonus

[EV_Ares]

Reuters reports today that "The incoming Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., was awarded an $18.7 million cash bonus for half a year of work as the chief executive of the Goldman Sachs Group." The massive bonus was, not surprisingly, approved by Goldman Sachs at the very same time Paulson was both CEO and Treasury Secretary designate. This raises a very simple question: What is Goldman Sachs buying with this brazen payoff to someone they knew was headed to one of the most powerful government posts in America?

In my book Hostile Takeover, I note that these sorts of payoffs happen all the time -- and they are made with public policy favors in mind. The most high profile before Paulson's was the payoff Halliburton gave to Dick Cheney in the form of a truckload of "deferred compensation" valued in the tens of millions. At the time, those who raised questions about what such a payoff would buy were dismissed by the Washington Establishment as conspiracy theorists . The insiders who populate this Establishment, of course, are addicted to the revolving door, and they didn't want anyone questioning it. Now, just a few years later, we found out that, indeed, Halliburton's generosity to Cheney was a payoff, as the Vice President used his office to help the oil company secure huge government contracts in the aftermath of the Iraq War.

So again, a simple question: With Goldman Sachs handing incoming Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson an $18.7 million bonus for six months of service, what is the company looking for in return? After all, Goldman Sachs has had a lot of business before the government that Paulson's Treasury Department has been involved in and can influence. Here are just a few factoids about the Goldman Sachs-Government connections that raise questions about the Paulson payoff:

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