New York, May 19: Who do you think was one of the Bush Administration’s key players on the economy?

If you say Paulson or Bernanke, you might be half right. But there’s another no-name lurking around in the background who tends to be doing the wrong thing at every key moment in the covert history of the Bush (or should we say “Bush League”) Republic.

His name is Jim Wilkinson. He helped organize the GOP protest/obstruction of the Miami election recount in 2000. He was the White House’s key media spinner at the Doha Coalition Media Center. A reporter from Texas said he used techniques first perfected by Stalin. He was an architect of the Republican convention in New York in 2004. He was later dispatched to keep an eye on, and act as ‘dissembler in chief’ for Condi Rice.

But at a crucial moment in the history of the western world, Mr. “I work in the shadows” Wilkinson became chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the Goldman Sachs Embed in the Cabinet.

Operative Wilkinson was then given the assignment of monitoring the world’s financial markets in a secret operation modeled no doubt on the great intelligence plan that produced the Iraq War.

His qualifications for this historic role?

See above.

As Mike Whitney reported at the end of October 2006 - a day before Halloween - the US was then engineering the drop in the dollar to “improve competitiveness” – i.e. subsidize US exports in a flawed attempt to reduce the growing balance of trade gap. The result was summed up in the headline: “The U.S. Dollar is kaput. Confidence in the currency is eroding by the day.”

Whitney saw then what our media has still yet to report or understand. Was it a “trick or treat?” Read on:

“The financial crisis that we now face was created by design. It is intended to destroy the labor movement, crush the middle class, quash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, reduce our foreign debt by 50 or 60%, force a restructuring of America’s debt, privatize all public assets and resources, and create a new regime of austerity measures which will divert more wealth to the banking and corporate establishment.”

This was months before the subprime meltdown in August 2007, or the more recent hike in food prices and oil prices. Their plan, blessed by business and the banks, was implemented step by step. The consequence was intended.

News, as we know, passes by so fast, and unless a story is repeated ad nauseum, no one remembers it or looks for the context and background of breaking developments.

Whitney quoted Richard Daughty, “from his prescient article, ‘The Phase of Impact’ the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept have already manned the battle-stations.”

Here’s an excerpt:

“Mr. Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, is, by virtue of his ascension to the throne, now the head of the shadowy President’s Working Group of Financial Markets (which was created by Presidential Order 12631) and he is insisting that they meet more often, namely every 6 weeks!

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