Other notables serving with Meg Whitman on Goldman's board included John Thain, the Merrill Lynch CEO-billionaire who used company money to buy $1,500 waste paper baskets for his office, and who later took $4 billion in taxpayer bailout money and doled it out to his fellow Merrill bankers as bonuses before being sent on his merry way. Overseeing Goldman's board with Whitman, Thain and Sir John Browne was none other Hank Paulson, Bush's Treasury Secretary who devised the bail-outs of all of his billionaire banker friends in his last months in office. What is so stunning about Whitman's stock kickback scheme with Goldman Sachs is how quickly she exploited her new CEO position of power at eBay, at the expense of company shareholders and employees.