Jim Lehrer had Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson on his show last night. Lehrer's opens the discussion by saying "We have spent $350 billion on the Troubled Assets Recovery Program and nothing good has come of it. The stock market is crashing, unemployment is up and sales are down". Paulson didn't want to accept this and Lehrer gave him a good five minutes without interruption to make him case. Paulson claimed the the financial system was better and without the TARP money it would be worse, but never did he bring forth a single number to support his position. Hey we are talking about money here, and if nothing else, money can be counted. Paulson should have had figures, and graphs showing how the financial system has done since October. He didn't.
As my savings looses it value day by day, I find it hard to believe Paulson assertion that "the financial system" is getting better. Not unless he has some numbers to back up his arguments.
So then, Lehrer asks Paulson if the government should bail out GM. Good question. Paulson dodges it and makes a quibble that Congress didn't authorize a GM bailout in the TARP program.
Surely a guy like Paulson, ex Morgan Stanley CEO, has some opinion on the wisdom of handing billions of taxpayer dollars to a doomed company like GM. Why didn't he share them with us TV viewers? It's not like he needs the votes of UAW workers to get reelected.
No comments:
Post a Comment