Henry Paulson is a bad witness for himself.

Testifying before Congress this morning, he said: "I am very proud of the decisive actions” he has taken as Treasury Secretary in this economic crisis.

What’s there to be proud of?

He lavished $250 billion of our money on reckless banks, but didn’t even bother to demand a say in how the banks operate.

These banks, which got us into the mess in the first place, were about to go bankrupt, and he had them over the barrel, and all that he extracted was a concession on executive pay.

In a New York Times op-ed today, he acknowledged that “the decline in the housing market is at the root of the economic downturn and our financial market stress.”

But he hasn’t called for a moratorium on foreclosures.

Or a freeze on subprime mortgage rates.

Or a write-down on the mortgages to make them more affordable and more in line with pre-bubble prices.

Or federal purchases of those mortgages, as even John McCain advocated.

No, his answer, he said in the Times, is “more access to lower-cost mortgages.”

But the kicker is, he isn’t requiring the banks to provide this access. So they’re hoarding the money, and contemplating buying up other banks rather than make loans to homeowners and businesses.

On top of that, as Naomi Klein has pointed out on Democracy Now on Monday, Paulson “pushed through a tax windfall for the banks . . . that allows the banks to save a huge amount of money when they merge with each other. And the estimate is that this represents a loss of $140 billion worth of tax revenue for the U.S. government.”

Paulson’s response to this crisis has been arrogant, incompetent, untransparent, and crony.

We’re all the poorer for it.