Posted on 02/16/2010 5:08:43 PM PST by 1rudeboy
Hank Paulson tells how he brought us back from the brink of financial collapse by bending the rules of the free market.
Stop sniping at Hank Paulson. The former Treasury Secretary saved the day by overcoming his predilection for free market capitalism and he didn't do it to save Goldman Sachs, his and my alma mater. His pragmatic boldness helped save the capitalist system from a possible total collapse.
Read On The Brink, Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System (Business Plus, $28.99) and get Paulson's take on the whole affair. The facts are these: In the six months between March and September of 2008, eight major financial institutions--Bear Stearns, IndyMac, Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ), Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ), Lehman Brothers ( LEHMQ - news - people ), AIG ( AIG - news - people ), Wash Mutual and Wachovia--went under or had to be rescued in costly fashion. Citigroup ( C - news - people ) was insolvent; Bank of America ( BAC - news - people ), Goldman Sachs ( GS - news - people ), and Morgan Stanley ( MS - news - people ) were on the edge for a while.
I was mentally exhausted trying to keep straight these cumulative crises all these many months later. There was no time to catch a breath.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Another book to add to the reading pile.
Little conflict of interest here?
Not if he discloses it, and he just did.
Soon this book will be sold at the Dollar Store.
>Soon this book will be sold at the Dollar Store.
Soon the number of Dollars to buy something at the Dollar Store will be 50.... [/cynic]
A little legacy building here. We won’t know for a while whether his actions worked or not.
>> Goldman Sachs... his and my alma mater
That definitely establishes your credibility with me, Bob.
How about “the economic equivalent of gangrene.”
Only if you believe him. I don’t. The fact is he pulled a trillion dollar bait and switch on the American taxpayers. He proposed a plan to buy “troubled assets” to take them off the books, insisted that he needed to have the cash immedieately, and have a completely free hand to spend the money any way he chose. Then once he had it, he completely changed the plan within days. Why should anybody believe his self-serving book of lies, let alone spend money to read it?
“I ain’t one fer no fancy book-lernin.’”
“his and my alma mater”
There’s an unbiased review.
Oh, I don't know . . . maybe because someone will actually be able to determine the truth, instead of listening to self-serving knee-jerk reactions about Goldman Sachs?
(Lots of them, here on this thread).
I seem to remember that he got down on his knees and begged Nanny Pelosi to help him.
http://www.forbes.com/fdc/bios/new/robertlenzner.html
Robert Lenzner is National Editor of Forbes magazine. He joined Forbes as a Senior Editor in September 1992. His areas of expertise include Wall Street, investment banking, finance, the oil industry, corporate takeovers, insider trading and litigation.
Prior to joining Forbes, Mr. Lenzner was a Columnist for the Boston Globe and the Dallas Morning News from 1990 to 1992. He was New York Correspondent for the Boston Globe from 1971 to 1982 and their New York Bureau Chief from 1983 to 1990. He was also a Correspondent for The Economist from 1973 to 1992.
From 1969 to 1970 Mr. Lenzner was Manager of the Arbitrage Department at Oppenheimer & Co., and he was assistant to the partner in charge of trading and arbitrage at Goldman Sachs & Co. from 1962 to 1968.
Mr. Lenzner has appeared on “Forbes on Fox,” “Forbes on Radio,” the BBC, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC. He can address Wall Street, the market, interest rates, white-collar crime, housing, the dollar and corporate governance.
He is the author of The Great Getty, a biography of J. Paul Getty, which spent 13 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, rising to number three. His articles have also appeared in Barron’s, Vanity Fair, the (London) Financial Times, the New York Observer and the Rocky Mountain News, among others.
Mr. Lenzner has a B.A. (cum laude) from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University. He also attended Oxford University from 1957 to 1958.
How is criticizing Goldman Sachs “self-serving”? Aside from not liking to see tax money go to a company that seems to own the Treasury Department (along with CITI) and get bailouts whenever one of their risky insvestments goes bad.
Nice racket for the Ivy League grifters of the Wall Street-Washington job exchange though. I’m sure they really care about the average American’s well being.
A trillion dollar bait and swicth is reason enough for me. Fool me once...
LOL. I watched Greta interview him.
I’m not certain I want to plow through his book....
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