O'Neill watch.

• Position: Off The News

White House political officials admit to being a bit stunned during the summer at a meeting on economic policy (with the President not in attendance). Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was offering several observations. At the completion of his remarks, National Economic Council Chairman Lawrence Lindsey continued the discussion and, according to White House political staffers, ended by offering the suggestion that the President might be better served if the Treasury notified the White House before any public pronouncements potentially affecting financial markets.

Bristling with indignation over this suggestion, Mr. O'Neill is said to have shot back: You'll be told what I'm going to say "on a need-to-know basis."

The summer of 2002 has hardly been smooth sailing for the Treasury chief who is blamed for at least two major public misstatements which roiled financial markets in Brazil, precipitating at least in part the need for a major I.M.F. bailout package. Indeed, one of Washington's newest pasttimes is to discuss how someone with O'Neill's superb record in business and earlier government service could now be so out of step with the movement of markets on policy issues.

Perhaps the best explanation is that the Treasury chief is an absolute superb micro analyst and an equally miserable macro analyst. Put another way, when addressing almost any issue, the Treasury Secretary almost invariably sees things through the lens of the C.E.O. "When I ran Alcoa" seems to be his favorite introductory phrase when addressing almost any and all issues. Of course, managing the "theater" of global financial markets as the head of the U.S. Treasury tends to involve more macro skills, including anticipating large-scale changes in capital flows based on perceptions of...