Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, September 25, 2008 5:58:31 PM
I guess the source shouldn’t surprise anyone, as former Treasury
Secretary Paul O’Neill has a habit of saying some fairly stupid
things. Today’s criticism of the Bush administration bailout plan,
from an interview with ABC News,
starts off well enough. O’Neill thinks that the White House and
Congress have both panicked, and that neither Barack Obama nor John
McCain know what they’re talking about. Unfortunately, O’Neill reveals
himself as a clueless idiot when he tries to toot his own horn:
O’Neill said we got into this mess because bankers were
not making prudent decisions, because they believed that by reselling
mortgages to Wall Street they weren’t going to be stuck with the
problems.
“We suspended disbelief and said we can take people with no known
source income or wealth generation and we can give them a $500,000
mortgage,” he said. “I think there’s a very important thing: When you
violate fundamental principles of economics you can get away with it
for a while, but eventually it’s going to get you.”
Does O’Neill wish he was still in office?
“I wish I was there two years ago became I think I would have blown
the whistle of these unbelievable loan practices and we would never
gotten to today,” he said. “That might be wishful thinking. It’s not
possible to really know that. But I’m a detail guy and I think I would
have been paying enough attention to the details that I would have
stopped the music.”
Say what? These lending practices and the sale of securities from these mortgages go back ten years.
Paul O’Neill served in office in 2001 and 2002, leaving at the end of
the year. In 2003, with John Snow at the helm, the Bush administration
first discovered the problem and tried to get Congress to act. Barney
Frank and the Democrats insisted that any attempt to tighten credit was
just a sign of latent racism, and Congress balked.