Paulson says U.S. lacked tools to tackle crisis: report

[DogPoundPup]

Source: Reuters

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Outgoing U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the U.S. government had to battle the financial crisis without the tools needed to do the job effectively, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Wednesday. Paulson also said any future regulatory overhaul needed to ensure that financial system infrastructure could allow for the failure of large institutions.

In one of his last interviews before leaving office, Paulson said, "We've done all this without all of the authorities that a major nation like the U.S. needs."

He said even after Congress in October approved the $700 billion troubled asset relief program, the U.S. still lacked tools such as an adequate special bankruptcy regime for non-bank financial firms.

"We're dealing with something that is really historic and we haven't had a playbook," he said.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE4BU06M20081231

[rwheeler31]

1. Wait you were in charge can"t you write books?

[bemildred]

2. Paulson is a tool, and he was lacking. nt

[Kaleko]

3. IOW, Paulson and Co are innocent.

He says the regulatory infrastructure the US needed was not in place and the global financial fallout caught them by surprise...

More from the article:

Paulson said he was surprised by the ferocity of the crisis but believed he grasped from August how severe it was as problems at home funding companies Fannie Mae (FNM.N) (FNM.P) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N) (FRE.P) threatened to coalesce with a dangerous September results season for financial institutions.

"If you asked me six months ago... if I was surprised by the magnitude of the challenge, the answer is 'yes'," he said.

[riderinthestorm]

4. Says "the" Wall St. guru of all times, and his Depression Era Expert Bernanke....

Give me a fucking break. These guys, who KNEW for months ahead that there was a crash coming, weren't prepared with all the "tools"?!

WTF??! Paulson asked for $750 billion with no strings attached - and got it, and now is moaning about "authority"?

I am dumbfounded at the US public especially for getting snookered by this mob. Dumbfounded. We are sheep. Fools. Idiots. We have been played by the financiers and I am sickened at every statement guys like Paulson now proclaim. It's despicable.

[alllyingwhores]

8. You're "dumbfounded at the US public especially for getting snookered by this mob"??

I think you should be dumbfounded by the spineless Dems in Washington that couldn't bend over back wards far enough to throw the US public's tax dollars fast enough at all of Paulson's fat-f__k buddies on Wall Street--WITH ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTIONS ASKED!

Where are these Dem assholes now that half of the trillion has been given away to banks, and anyone who calls themselves a bank (in a two-page application), so they can hoard it or buy other banks or do whatever the f__k they want with ABSOLUTELY NO DISCLOSURE--and, of course, NO ACCOUNTABILITY?

[JDPriestly]

9. What worries me: If the banks can't tell us where the money

they got from the bail-out is or how much of it they have left, how is it I can know that they really know where the money I deposit with them is? The thought has occurred to me that they produce a running statement of my account each month but that the bank may not really reconcile all the accounts the have. I mean by that that it is relatively easy to add up my deposits and subtract my checks, transfers, withdrawals, payments, etc. It's just one account and doesn't involve that much money. But do they really have an accurate overview of all the money that passes through their accounts? I'm beginning to think they don't, and also that it would be impossible for them to say, state just exactly to whom they owed what on Friday at precisely 5:00 p.m.

[regnaD kciN]

5. He's right...

...in dealing with this crisis, the U.S. was handicapped by having an administration slavishly devoted to worship of the free market.

[aquart]

6. Does anybody buy this CYA crap?

[caseymoz]

7. Oh, so he needed more power.

I thought he came into office opposed to that, and anything else that might make businesses unhappy.

There was a time when institutions weren't "too big to fail." In those ancient days (that slip Paulson's mind) we had something called anti-trust laws. They went by the names of Sherman and Clayton, and before Reagan, they were actually enforced now and then.

The reason why he didn't have a play book was that this calamity wouldn't have happened if you and other de-regulation chumps hadn't thrown away the play book meant to avoid it.

Now Ben "I-know-how-to-stop-a-depression" Bernanke is putting his dissertation thesis to the test, finding out that it's harder to undo a train wreck than he thought, just as Paulson is. Everyone could have foreseen this other than people who were ideologically blind to it, like Paulson, like Reagan, like Clinton, like Bush, and like Bush II.

I realize this post has been all over the place, but I'd say the experiment with de-regulated capitalism has now been repeated. It's time to discard the idea.

[midnight]

10. Those tools were suppose to be in place, but I guess those

tools are only used for the working class.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. Sherman Act, Clayton Act

The tools might as well not exist if one doesn't use them.

[madrchsod]

11. clinton signed away the last regulation/law on the banking industry

....the moment fdr`s banking regulations / laws were passed the money class in america have been bribing away them away. they succeeded and we see the result.

[SoCalDem]

12. he had the perfect "tools" to load up his pals with our cash..n/t

[SOS]

14. Paulson says

"the U.S. still lacked tools such as an adequate special bankruptcy regime for non-bank financial firms."

And yet in 2005 the Congress had the foresight to pass the bankruptcy bill.
They damn well knew this was coming three years ago.
That's why they shafted the American worker/homeowner in advance.

When does the financially destroyed American family get a "special bankruptcy regime"?

[Festivito]

15. Republicans wrote the bill, Dems added to it, and we still lack tools?

Sounds to me that NOT-QUITE-YET-OUTGOING U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is a tool.