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Title: George W. Bush: Bailout Call 'Wasn't That Hard'
Source:
POLITICO
URL Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43883.html
Published: Oct 20, 2010
Author: ANDY BARR
Post Date: 2010-10-20 13:41:34 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 22551
Comments: 41
Former President George W. Bush on Tuesday night defended his decision to bail out banks toward the end of his term, saying the call “wasn’t that hard.” “I made the decision to use your money to prevent the collapse from happening,” Bush said during a speech in Tyler, Texas, according to reports from The Associated Press and other outlets. Bush said that when the markets crashed in the fall of 2008, he recognized that if his administration didn’t do “something significant,” a “depression greater than the Great Depression” could occur. The former president said the choice to backstop many of the country’s leading financial institutions “wasn’t that hard for me.” "Here's what you learn," Bush said of his time as president. "You realize you're not it. You're a part of something bigger than yourself."
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Bush made the right decision here.
#4. To: go65 (#1)
(Edited)
I completely disagree. First, it is a good thing when poorly run businesses go out of business because it allows their resources to be freed up for more productive uses. Second, over the last two decades, too many of the best and brightest Americans have chosen careers on Wall Street over science and engineering because of the big money involved. Someone with a masters degree in math from a top university who goes to work for HP or IBM creating products might make $80K out of school. As a "quant" on Wall Street, they could make $400k modeling derivatives and other crazy investment instruments. The bailout enabled these failed companies to continue to throw money at these people, as well as at their failed executives, to the detriment of the rest of the economy. Third, the savings of average people were not a risk because FDIC insurance covers $100K per account. The Japanese refused to restructure their banks when faced with a similar crisis in the early 90s. Now, the once mighty Japanese economy has been basically in a rolling recession for 20 years. It's hard for me to find even one thing that Bush did right, other than his two Supreme Court nominees. The TARP was one of the worst things he did.
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Replies to Comment # 1. Bush made the right decision here.
#5. To: go65 (#1)
Bush made the right decision here.
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