Hank Paulson, the former US Treasury secretary who orchestrated America’s financial bailouts, has attacked President Barack Obama’s proposals to break up big banks and clamp down on their trading activities. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Paulson said that the plans to stop banks from betting their own capital on the financial markets would “not solve the problem” or prevent a future crisis. He also said that the world needed big banks to kick-start the global economy. Rather than breaking them up, regulators should focus on how to wind them down in times of crisis, he said, as recommended by Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England.