Posted on 11/24/2008 3:18:49 AM PST by WilliamReading
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Forbes magazine President and CEO Steve Forbes called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson “the worst treasury secretary we’ve had in modern times”, citing, among other things, the government’s handling of the housing crisis.
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, Forbes repeatedly called on the treasury secretary to be more straightforward about the money used to bail out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“Have Henry Paulson do at least one thing right, and that is, have the government explicitly guarantee the debt of Fannie and Freddie,” the financial mogul and former Republican presidential candidate said.
When asked if he has confidence in Paulson, Forbes responded “No, sadly, Wolf. He's about the worst treasury secretary we've had in modern times.”
The Treasury Department had no comment on Forbes’ remark, but in a speech on Thursday, Paulson said that the administration’s proactive response to the troubled economy “prevented a far worse financial crisis.”
Bill Clinton’s former labor secretary Robert Reich was slightly less blunt than Forbes, but equally uncertain on Paulson’s ability to turn around the economy.
“I think that the great bailout that he engineered was really sold to Congress on false pretenses,” Reich said on Late Edition. “Paulson has not been very transparent. He's been very opaque. And it has riled markets.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
George W. Bush goes out on a very low note with his bad appointees. Paulson ranks up there with Paul Bremer, George Tenet, and Chris Cox, the incompetent SEC commissioner. Anyone seen Don Rumsfeld recently?
GWB destroyed McCain-Palin’s chances of winning the election. Right before Hank Paulson’s incompetent handling of the Lehman Brothers fiasco, McCain-Palin was ahead 5 points in the polls.
> GWB destroyed McCain-Palin’s chances of winning the election. Right before Hank Paulson’s incompetent handling of the Lehman Brothers fiasco, McCain-Palin was ahead 5 points in the polls.
If you were GWB, what would you have done differently?
I like some of his other cabinet posts, but sad to say, Bush went 0-3 in his Treasury Secretary selections. O'Neil, Snowe, and Paulson, there's a trio of RINO losers.
Paul Bremer and Tenet cost the United States taxpayers at least $2 trillion with their incompetence. Paulson caused investors at least $1 trillion dollars in losses.
Rumsfeld was utterly incompetent after the fall of Baghdad (he even had an autograph machine sign letters to the families of dead American soldiers, because he couldn’t be bothered).
Has anyone seen Don Rumsfeld recently? Where the heck is he?
I think Paulson is a Democrat.
But who would you have appointed instead?
Finally, even if none of these provisions make it into the bailout bill, the Greens will likely be able to count on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to implement their agenda for them.
To start.. I would of fired EVERYONE that had anything to do with the Democrat party when he started. Everyone of them that he kept stabbed him in the back.
The election was still winnable. McCain ran a horrible campaign. McCain had no real arguement until Joe the Plumber came along, and then it was too late. McCain let Obama slam Bush and never ever countered some of the lies Obama said about Bush, and the Obama was effective at tying McCain to Bush. McCain was an absolute idiot for letting Obama get away with that.
OK — but who would you have appointed?
Not the FReeper you are asking, but I would take any of these three as SecTreas in a heartbeat:
Robert Shiller
Ivy Zelman
Nouriel Roubini
All three earned their contrarian medals of merit during the housing bubble.
Yep. It is simply wrong to pin the entire blame for McCain's defeat on GWB. Bush certainly made his share of mistakes and Obammy made the most of them, but McCain met his defeat at least half way with his miserable campaign.....
“I think Paulson is a Democrat.”
I don’t care about his party affiliation, I am more concerned that his response to this financial crisis is akin to trying to extinguish a kitchen fire with a leaf blower. Investors are not fooled/nor amused.
If his campaign was so bad, why was he ahead up until the middle of September?
No one else could have done as well as McCain did. People were just sick of George Bush.
Why are people defending Bush? He didn’t govern as a conservative and had huge spending and incompetent oversight on the War in Iraq.
Bush’s approval rating at one point was 90 percent. It is now at 23 percent. Are the American people stupid? I don’t think so.
I think Bush/Paulson conspired to make sure McCain would lose.
McCain is a doddering old fool. I wanted to slap the crap out of him every time he mentioned his “friends” (the DemocRats) across the aisle. They’re not only NOT his friends, they are traitors to America.
PREDICTION: After they’ve rubbed our nose in Obama for four or eight years, they’ll nominate Jeb Bush to “save” us.
That reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George becomes a success by doing the exact opposite of what he normally does.
I never thought I’d see anyone worse than Paul O’Neill.
I'm sure you didn't mean that to be as funny as it is to me. Sad, but hilarious.
McCain was always unpopular on FR. It's no surprise that he lost. But then, the GOP didn't have anyone better running.
He is. One of Bush’s ‘reach across the aisle’ choices.
He is a mole as far as I’m concerned and did his best to get Obama elected (Paulson I mean)
Goes to show why you don’t reach across the aisle. The Democrats have no scruples as far as I’m concerned (heck, alot of Republicans don’t either for that matter) and will screw over a Republican in a heartbeat.
Yep, the only response he had to Obama’s lies about Bush was “I’m not Bush”.
“Bush’s approval rating at one point was 90 percent. It is now at 23 percent. Are the American people stupid? I don’t think so.”
Excuse me? 52% of Americans just voted Barack Obama as President. I beg to differ on the stupidity of the American people.
McCain was unpopular for a reason. He's been subverting conservatism for years. He's been cavorting with liberals so he could watch the press say nice things about him.
We had Mitt Romney, for one, that would have been a far better campaigner and is conservative more than McCain by at least an order of two.
Very very good point! John Snowe was probably the best of the lot but it was a very lowly lot.
I had hoped that W would surround himself with very good people but it turned out that many of his selections were probably the undoing of his Administration. His judgment on these individuals and others (Brownie, Putin) is/was probably his worst Achilles’ heel.
We mustn't forget Norm ("I'll sue the airlines for profiling") Minetta as well as his having kept on Richard Clarke, no to mention the cadre at State, Defense and CIA.
Sorry, I voted for W twice but WON'T hate to see him go.
At least with DEAR LEADER we will know that a true Marxist Rat is stabbing us in the back as opposed to having a faux Republican doing us dirty!!!
My thoughts on the eminent Chicken Little doom and gloom, must-resolve-by-Monday, bailout, was probably the single issue that doomed McLame/Palin and I cannot believe W didn't know this to be the case, yet was either ill-advised by Paulson or simply didn't care.
McCain should have caught a clue when the Democrats showed that even Hillary was not far enough left for them. He could have run against that but just muddled along as if in a trance.
It would be easy to build an argument that McCain did not want to win and, in fact, threw the election to the Democrats.
Paulson was Pres. Bush’s worst cabinet mistake, and that is saying something since he also chose losers such as Gonzales and Rice. In retrospect, I can’t think of a single cabinet member who did an outstanding job in the past eight years.
Had Bush chosen a cabinet of strong conservatives as Obama has chosen a liberal one, the country would be in far better shape today.
How did that and the pandering to illegal aliens work?
There is at least 1/5th of the voting demographic and possibly as much as one third who do not think in the traditional liberal vs. conservative terms. These people are apolitical and largely governed by their emotions of which candidate makes them feel better. Oba Mao won most of these voters not only because he outspent and out marketed McCain, but because McCain gave them little reason to feel otherwise with his hard play to the same moderate demographic.
My final contention is that McCain didn't really want to be president all that badly. He just wanted to make sure that a conservative or even a moderate with some conservative leanings on economic issues (such as Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney) would have no chance to be elected.
“He is a mole as far as I’m concerned and did his best to get Obama elected (Paulson I mean)”
Let’s not forget about the yoeman type efforts of Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd and Franklin Raines and the MEDIA. Truely an orchestrated effort in my opinion. That was a debacle of unbelievable proportions and it all laid flatly to blame at the feet of W even though the above jack offs were the culprits!
Okay, agreed. McCain was a phony conservative. When are you going to wake up and realize that Bush was an even phonier conservative?
Who signed No Child Left Behind, Medicare Prescription entitlement, McCain-Feingold? Since when is ramping up huge deficits considered conservative? Since when is appointing incompetent fools conservative?
“Bush’s approval rating at one point was 90 percent. It is now at 23 percent. Are the American people stupid? I don’t think so.”
If they accept that “Bush is the Bogie Man” (every tyranny need one) and leave all others blameless then I would have to say yes The American people are stupid, or at least responding to emotion instead of reason. Emotion, our engine, drives us but reason must steer us, I fear a bridge abutment is in our future.
I have no problem with "reaching out" to the left with appointments to posts such as ambassador to Ireland or even Secretary of the Department of Breads and Circuses if they feel a high profile position is necessary. But not Secretary of the Treasury, State, Commerce, Defense or anything which can compromise the safety of the country in ways liberals habitually do.
CNN= Communist News Network
Unfortunately, the crisis erupted on its own with Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Lehman, Merill all falling into crisis within a 10-day period in Europe. Paulson let Lehman fail while moving to shore up the others. Lehman’s failure led to a credit crunch in short-term borrowing, and we were in a full-blown panic.
You have encapsulated seventy percent of everything that went wrong in the Bush Presidency - the "New Tone" of cooperating with Democrats. The other thirty percent of what went wrong is that he never seemed to learn that the "New Tone" was a terrible idea.
Oops. I didn’t meant to say Europe. I mean to say September. It’s too early in the day for me.
One of the things that has destroyed Bush’s claim to being a good president is the people he has put around him. Paulson is just one in a long line of duds. Bremer was one. Brownine was one. Rice ain’t great. Powell wasn’t up to his reputation. O’Neill sucked.
Uh, I realized that about seven years ago. My posting history will bear that out.
There are no conservatives in the nation spotlight. Even Palin has some liberal views. We all do. But. There is not one politician I can see that would fulfill my desires vis-a-vis conservatism. The country has been tilted to the left no matter what the pundits say. Our only hope is that Barry Hussein flubs up so bad in his first year that the people of the U.S. see him for what he is. If they get amnesty and another 12 to 20 million voters are added to the rolls you can kiss conservatism good bye forever.
Let's not forget Mel Martinez and Alphonso Jackson as Secretaries of HUD. Until this year Fannie and Freddie came under HUD. They allowed the mortgage mess to continue under Bush. They also had full knowledge of what was going on.
*Crickets*
C’mon, tell us who.
Then, tell us what should’ve been done differently and when. And, while you're at it, quantify the results.
Bush is NOT innocent in this. He appointed Martinez and Alphonso Jackson as Secretaries of HUD under whose purview Fannie and Freddie operated. Bush also pushed for expansion of sub-prime mortgages to minorities. You can look up in the White House speeches he gave.
Robert Rubin, Lloyd Bentsen.
Madeline Halfbright, Warren Christopher.
James Lee Witt.
Janet Reno, Mickey Kantor, William Daley, Alexis Herman, Donna Shalala, Henry Cisneros.........
I sure did like how Paul Bremer used to wear his cowboy boots when he was running Iraq for America.
Maybe that’s why Bush picked him? Was there anyone less knowledgeable about Iraq than Bremer?
Nice boots though.
I think the point is not whether Bush was liberal or conservative. The point is he was incompetent.
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