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 ...
What was he doing on his knees? You sure it was him?
You may be ultimately proven correct. I won’t read the book for a couple months, myself. (I usually don’t make up my mind before learning what happened).
Harvard, Columbia....looks like we need to avoid those two.
"Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal."
Ron Paul, End the Fed.He recommends Gasparino the most. I recommend, Thomas Sowell's, The Housing Boom and Bust.
Bill Fleckenstein, Greenspan's Bubbles: The Age of Recklessness at the Federal Reserve.
Barry Ritholtz, Bailout Nation.
William Cohan, House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street.
Patrick Robinson, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense:The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Charles Gasparino, The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System.
““I ain’t one fer no fancy book-lernin.’””
Perhaps we view his academic background as long on name and short on substance.
If you haven’t gathered the larger point that I’m trying to make, then I will simply repeat, “short on substance” is something that is easy to prove, as well as assume.
Perhaps you've missed my point: a degree from a prestigious university is no actual proof you had any appropriate or useful “book lernin”. It means you have a checkbook and could pass a test. Little more.
It's not as if his field (Paulson's) was particularly rigorous. He just has an MBA.
paulson hearts obama
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs chairman, told him that Goldman would be “next” if speculators succeeded in bringing down Morgan Stanley, the former Treasury secretary said.
“If they go, we’re next,” Mr Blankfein told Mr Paulson, a former Goldman chairman who had recused himself from decisions relating to his former company.
US officials explored the possibility of mergers between JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, Goldman and Citigroup, or Goldman and Wachovia, before settling on turning Morgan Stanley and Goldman into banks with access to central bank loans.
Even then, Morgan Stanley was not safe until the US Treasury helped seal an investment by Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ, Mr Paulson writes.
The frenzied manoeuvring came in the three-week period between the failure of Lehman on September 15 2008, and Columbus Day weekend in early October, when the global financial system was on the verge of meltdown.
“Banks were going down like flies,” Mr Paulson told the FT. As his book details, he was scrambling to secure Tarp bail-out funds from Congress.
“The timing could not have been worse since we were months or weeks from the election so you had the collision of markets and politics.”
Although a Republican, Mr Paulson found it harder to deal with John McCain than Barack Obama – raising the interesting (and unanswered) question of which candidate Mr Paulson voted for.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/772748d6-0e94-11df-bd79-00144feabdc0.html
I was afraid that it was your point, actually. You appear to be arguing that Paulson claims in his book (that I haven't read) that people should listen to him because he graduated from an Ivy League School.
I should add that no one that I can see is doing anything of the kind, much less Paulson himself, but there is no shortage of people arguing that we should not listen to him for the same reason.
That may be true. Now why shouldn’t I read his book, again?
I presume that he thinks people should listen to him because he was SecTreas. I was replying to your “don't need no book lernin’” line.
“I should add that no one that I can see is doing anything of the kind, much less Paulson himself, but there is no shortage of people arguing that we should not listen to him for the same reason.”
Best I can tell, he's a liar and a thief, albeit “legally”. So, that is one reason not to listen to him. Perhaps, after the audit, he'll be indicted.
I'm just trying to get a handle on how someone can express a desire to see someone "indicted" while expressing no desire to hear that person express their side of the story. Never mind, I just got a handle on it. Burn him with fire.
Paulson was a Republican???!!!
A self-serving RINO, then. Hardly a conservative.
“I’m just trying to get a handle on how someone can express a desire to see someone “indicted” while expressing no desire to hear that person express their side of the story.”
Because I don’t expect it to be anything other than spin.
Everyone is innocent in prison, after all.
When you are finished with Paulson's book, tell me the answer to these questions (I'm lazy, and probably won't read the book):
Who were the people/governments that were able to take half a trillion dollars out of circulation within a 36 hour period? And how did they do it?
Thanking you in advance...
5.56mm
“A self-serving RINO, then. Hardly a conservative.”
There were only a handful of conservatives in the Bush Admin. I can only think of Bolton, Ashrcroft, and maybe Cheney.
Last time I checked, before someone gets tossed in prison there usually is a trial.
I haven’t heard of that . . . if anything, I thought that the Fed flooded the system with dollars . . . .
“Last time I checked, before someone gets tossed in prison there usually is a trial.”
Missin’ the point again, I see. OK... How about this:
“Everyone on trial is innocent”.
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