Hank Paulson Doing Rehab on the Weekend Shows
I presume this is for his upcoming book. I've never understood how Hank Paulson ran Goldman.
But the thing that bothers me the most is his handling of the financial crisis. It seeemed that at many stages he accelerated the crisis where at many points it might have been diverted or at least slowed.
- The man struggled for a structure to use to save the banks instead of tried and true methods used in every prior crisis that wiped out debt holders.
- He made it clear that at no point he would save Lehman when his handling of that failure and Lehman's collapse greatly accelerated the problem
- It's not clear that the system is saved, but rather put into some sort of suspended animation where the condition could relapse at any point.
- The Fannie/Freddie guarantees were obviously a difficult call especially with apparent rumors around Russian pressure on this debt however, the taxpayer liability here dwarfs anything I've seen.
- The bailout of the auto companies and unions.
If we had just forced debt write downs as part of the bailouts I think I might feel a bit less hoodwinked at a taxpayer. The standard line from him and Geithner was "It's the best alternative among a bunch of bad ones".
No, you could have let the write downs happen and the country now would have less debt.
It's not the same kinda feeling I had about Edwards when he campaigned where I thought he was a panderer and dishonest-- I just don't think Hank was a very capable Secretary of the Treasury. I think he panicked and was in over his intellectual capacity to solve problems. Not a bad or evil person, just not a competent or intellectually deep person.
Mr. Paulson wanted to have an impact as SOT, and he has left his mark.
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