Hank Paulson, the former executive from Goldman Sachs who joined the Bush Administration and dealt with the financial crisis in 2007 to 2008, has finished his memoir which is set to come out soon, is going to be blasting Senate and House Republicans.
Paulson blasts GOP in Memoir
For a snippet into that, Newsweek, which has reviewed his book, encloses a paragraph which details his interactions with republicans. Apparently this isn't the first snippet and won't be the last but he was furious about their responses during the Financial Crisis.
Paulson delivers a continual and biting critique of Republicans. Right out of the gate, he takes a swipe at Sarah Palin, saying that while he encourages everyone he works with to call him Hank, when she did it over the phone during the campaign, "for some reason, the way she said it over the phone like that, even though we’d never met, rubbed me the wrong way" (page 15). Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning is a "cantankerous conservative" (page 275). Meetings with Senate Republicans were "a complete waste of time for us, when time was more precious than anything" (page 275). Ideas that Republicans do add are "unformed," like Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor’s plan to replace TARP with an insurance program. In a rare moment of sarcasm, Paulson goes off on the minority Whip: "I got a better idea. I’m going to go with Eric Cantor’s insurance program. That’s the idea to save the day" (page 285).
He calls Eric Cantor a joke, Palin weird and just a heck of a lot more. Do I think what he did during the housing crisis was correct? No. I would have done things a little differently. I would have done my best to get the best deal for the taxpayer. But, I think folks of varying stripes can argue that the times were pretty scary. We were dealing with, potentially, the end of the economy.
I don't expect to agree with Mr. Paulson's ideas but based on this paragraph alone, I may actually buy his book. It seems like it would be an insightful look into what happened during the crisis.