CORRECTED—Former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson and TPG Capital Raise $5.4 Billion For Climate Fund

Mr. Paulson was also the American Secretary of the Treasury, more on that after the jump.

From BusinessWire via Yahoo Finance:

TPG Announces $5.4 Billion First Close of TPG Rise Climate Fund

Fund to deploy mission-driven capital at scale, leveraging team’s decades of experience and rigorous impact assessment capability to scale companies across the climate sector

Anchor investors include some of the world’s largest institutional investors and more than 20 global companies

FORT WORTH, Texas & SAN FRANCISCO, July 27, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TPG Rise Climate, the climate investing strategy of TPG’s global impact investing platform TPG Rise, today announced the first close of $5.4 billion in subscriptions to its inaugural fund. With the fund’s first close, TPG Rise Climate is bringing together a unique blend of capital from some of the world’s largest institutional investors and over 20 leading companies to invest in the entrepreneurs and businesses building climate solutions around the world. TPG Rise Climate has set a hard cap of $7 billion in total capital commitments and expects to hold a final close in the fourth quarter of 2021.....

***blah, blah, blah***

.... TPG Rise Climate’s first close received subscriptions from some of the world’s largest institutional investors including Allstate, AXA, The Hartford, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, Public Investment Fund, Public Sector Pension Investment Board, School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, Silk Road Fund, State of Michigan Retirement System, Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), and Washington State Investment Board. Together with other limited partners subscribing to the fund, this group manages more than $3 trillion of assets globally....

***blah***

....The Rise Climate Coalition is comprised of more than 20 founding companies and members including 3M, ADM, Allianz, Allstate, Alphabet, Apple, AXA, Bank of America, Boeing, Dow, Exor, FedEx, GE, General Motors, Honeywell, John Deere, Michael R. Bloomberg, NIKE, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Smithfield Foods, and TD Bank Group.....

....MUCH MORE

 The financial crisis of 2008 - 2009 happened on Mr. Paulson's watch as Secretary of the Treasury.

Something that might have humbled a lesser man.

Instead, in one of the many hitherto unthinkable events of that fall and winter, Paulson told Congress that the only way to save the financial system and thus the world economy, nay, civilization itself, was to make him absolute dictator:

...Sec. 8. Review
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

—Text of Draft Proposal for Bailout Plan, NYT 20Sep08

Congress was actually considering the idea and I was in the office on Sunday the 21st trying to game out the action on Monday and riffing off of Machiavelli's Discourses, having lost my mind over the course of the previous two weeks.

Well, somebody wised up over at the Capitol and Congress said "No, but thank you for offering to become Dictator." and the DJIA tanked 777 points, a then record point-puke.

So, adjusting to the new reality I began telling jokes

12:49 p.m. 
"Don't panic - just a temporary crash floe problem."
Overheard on the Titanic. 

which image had been triggered by an earlier report that polar bears were rafting from Greenland to Iceland:

Iceland on High Alert
..MARAUDING polar bears could cause terror on Iceland after experts claimed global warming could bring the killer beasts across the sea....
...Climate expert Thor Jakobsson said: "Since two have reached the shore, more could be on the way."Thor is calling for aerial surveillance of the ice, as well, to protect the Icelandic population....

Later we were told:

Goldman Sachovia Would’ve Happened If Warren Buffett Hadn’t Stepped In And Pointed Out The Obvious (BRK.A; GS)

The Oracle of Omaha. He’s not just good for marrying folksy business wisdom with aberrant sex fetish. He can also be counted on to bring up the pink elephant in the room (it helps if said elephant has huge cans) when no one else will. According to Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book on the weeks following Lehman biting the big one, everybody was ready to sign off on a merger between Goldman and Wachovia until Buffett knocked his cane against some foreheads while asking, “Who does Hank Paulson work for? Think, McFly, think!”

Sorkin reports that the deal, which was nearly consummated, would have merged Goldman Sachs and Wachovia. Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary and former C.E.O. of Goldman, was deeply involved in the process, contacting both Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s current C.E.O., and a Wachovia board member, and strongly urged both to consider it. Wachovia’s C.E.O., Robert Steel, was a former vice-chairman at Goldman Sachs and Paulson’s former number two at the Treasury Department.

Sorkin reports that Warren Buffett was also contacted about investing in the merged company, but told a banker at Goldman that it would never happen. “By tonight the government will realize they can’t provide capital to a deal that’s being done by the former firm of the Treasury secretary with the company of a former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs and former deputy Treasury secretary,” Buffett said.

“There is no way. They’ll all wake up and realize, even if it was the best deal in the world, they can’t do it.”

And:

Time for a Perp Walk? "Hank Paulson’s inside jobs"
And since Mr. Geithner was head of the New York Fed at that time maybe he should also be made to answer for what was going on.
From Felix Salmon at Reuters:

What on earth did Hank Paulson think his job was in the summer of 2008? As far as most of us were concerned, he was secretary of the US Treasury, answerable to the US people and to the president. But at the same time, in secret meetings, Paulson was hanging out with his old Goldman Sachs buddies, giving them invaluable information about what he was thinking in his new job.

The first news of this behavior came in October 2009, when Andrew Ross Sorkin revealed that Paulson had met with the entire board of Goldman Sachs in a Moscow hotel suite for an hour at the end of June 2008. He told them his views of the US and global economies, he previewed a market-moving speech he was about to give, and he even talked about the possibility that Lehman Brothers might blow up. Maybe it’s not so surprising that Goldman Sachs turned out to be so well positioned when Lehman did indeed do just that a few months later.

Today we learn that the Goldman meeting in Moscow was not some kind of aberration. A few weeks later, on July 28 2008, Paulson met with a who’s who of the hedge-fund world in the headquarters of Eton Park Capital Management — a fund founded by former Goldman superstar Eric Mindich....MORE

That's what I think of when I I see Mr. Paulson's name.

More on other big funds being raised in anticipation of the upcoming climate confab which, if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly should set off the last bubble of our lifetimes.