President Hank

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: The Treasury was always intended to be at the heart of the American government. George Washington’s first Cabinet appointment was his treasury secretary. The Treasury building is connected to the White House by an underground tunnel.

Yet for most of the Bush years the Treasury has been a backwater. Paul O’Neill disagreed with the Bush administration about the central thrust of its economic policy — deficit-boosting tax cuts — and was first neutered and then sacked. John Snow went to the other extreme and functioned as a travelling salesman for policies cooked up in the White House. The people who mattered in Washington were the war hawks, not the money men.

The Treasury is now back at the heart of government. Hank Paulson has been the dynamo behind everything from the $168 billion stimulus package to the latest plan for a $700 billion bail-out of Wall Street. Mr Paulson may go down in history as the man who saved American capitalism or the man who mishandled the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. But he will certainly not go down as the third in a succession of empty suits.

A whiff of the old American establishment hangs about Mr Paulson; the establishment of well-bred WASPs with Ivy League educations and muscular Christian views. His six-foot-one frame is rendered more imposing by his iron self-belief. He was educated at Dartmouth, where he studied English and distinguished himself on the (American) football field, earning the nickname “the Hammer” for his relentlessness. He spent his career working for the premier investment bank on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs.

But in fact Mr Paulson is very far from being a member of the old establishment. He was brought up on a farm in Barrington Hills, Illinois. He is a devout Christian Scientist who does not drink or smoke. In calmer times, he spends his weekends back home in Illinois rather than playing golf or hobnobbing in the Hamptons.

Mr Paulson made his career at Goldman Sachs at a time when the company was transforming itself into a global meritocracy. He led the company’s drive into the Asian market (he has visited China more than 70 times). His forte at Goldman, above all, was deal-making. But he was also a hard-edged office politician. He became chairman in 1999 after helping to lead a palace coup against John Corzine.