“Paulson is visiting India from Oct. 27 to 31, with stops in Calcutta, Mumbai and New Delhi. He has said he will encourage India to step up economic reforms and search for a solution to long-stalled global trade talks.

The deal would reverse three decades of American anti-proliferation policy by allowing the U.S. to send nuclear fuel and technology to India, which has been cut off from the global atomic trade by its refusal to sign nonproliferation treaties and its testing of nuclear weapons.

The Indian government has not taken the next steps in closing the deal — negotiating separate agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Suppliers Group, a group of nations that export nuclear material.

The deal faces opposition in America, too. Critics there, including some in Congress, say providing U.S. fuel to India would free up India’s limited domestic supplies of nuclear material for use in atomic weapons, which they argue could spark a nuclear arms race in Asia.

U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have sold the deal, first conceived in 2005, as a way to bring India — a nuclear weapons state — into the international atomic mainstream. They’ve also touted its benefits for India’s booming but energy-hungry economy, which would gain access to much-needed atomic fuel and technologies.

“It would help India to meet its energy needs,” Paulson said Sunday.

Comment:

Having been for a while an admirer of our Hank’s financial legerdemain (as evidenced by such fawning essays as, “Hanky Panky in the Counting House”)

I can only marvel at what a prankster the Hankster is. Not content with just playing he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not with the pining greenback (a full-time job, you would think, just there), he shows us what Gold-men are really made of by romancing da bomb.

(Please do not write in and tell me that the line above is anti-semitic. I can’t resist word play and if you were the former head of a bank called Goldman Sachs, you will have to expect that I will make hay..er..gold dust.. out of that.)