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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2010 > January > 28 > Entry
The genius behind the bank bailouts…
(Unfortunate Timing Department) In the waning days of the administration of George W. Bush his Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Jr. engineered the 700 billion dollar bank bailout. Hank took it to the bank. Was he a hero? Or a goat?
The jury is still out on that one. After President Obama’s State of the Union address last night many Americans are probably wondering what in tarnation is really going on? Obama took great pains to point out that we had a big surplus when Bush was elected and that 8 years later we had a gigantic mess.
And Hank Paulson was right there steering the fiscal ship of state into the shoals.
Even so, the book publishing cycle continues without much regard for reality. Hank Paulson’s own account of his heroic and valiant bailout architecture, On the Brink will be published next week.
Here is Paulson’s description from the author notes:
“I believe the most important part of this story is the way Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and I worked as a team through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. There can’t be many other examples of economic leaders managing a crisis who had as much trust in one another as we did. Our partnership proved to be an enormous asset during an incredibly difficult period. But at the same time, this is my story, and as hard as I have tried to reflect the contributions made by everyone involved, it is primarily about my work and that of my talented and dedicated team at Treasury.”
Ben Bernanke? A hero? Tim Geithner? A hero? Hank Paulson? They are all heroes? Have we entered an alternate universe here, Bizarro Treasury World?
How well do they expect this thing to sell? Are Americans eager to read this air brushed account of our bank bailout heroes?
But there it is all over the front page at Amazon.com. Hank Paulson. Our hero.
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: booms and busts
Comments
By prose
January 31, 2010 9:25 PM | Link to this
With apologies to Fleetwood Mac, “Heroes are so hard to find”. I wonder if letting these financial experts and their companies go down wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. Maybe, it would have been the greatest wake up call in our history, that our country needs to actually make things, for our people to have jobs. Instead, we get apologists, like Paulson, walking away with half a billion dollars and telling us how hard Geitner, Bernanke and him saved us from 25% unemployment. I think we’re there anyway, and he and others are making more money regaling us with BS about how hard they worked to save the system. Who’s been saved?
By Blowfly
January 29, 2010 3:46 PM | Link to this
I think Paulson deserves both blame and credit, like a guy who sets his house on fire but at least has the good sense to put it out. In a way, it’s not surprising that the only people with the ability to fix the mess were the people who made the mess, no one else understood it well enough. But, I think it’s the Federal Reserve that really deserves the credit for rescuing the financial system (to the extent anyone can claim “credit”). The Fed put 10s of trillions of dollars into the system to avert a collapse, that dwarfed anything anyone else did.
By Rob
January 29, 2010 12:05 PM | Link to this
I don’t know that Secretary paulson had too many outstanding options to exercise in staving off a crisis, and heaven knows we were hanging by a thread. I’ll look forward to reading this. I am much more curious about “waterboard madoff” - did you actually read Secretary O’Neill’s book? And you come to some sort of “heroic” assesment with respect to Mr. O’Neill somehow defending the honor of the past administration? Uh - how?
By Raoul
January 28, 2010 5:12 PM | Link to this
Heroe’s are hard to find in this mess. Particularly when those same guys were along for the whole ride. I am not a conspiracy theory type of guy, but I still smell something funny in the way this whole thing happened. Someday I hope we learn the truth.
By waterboard madoff
January 28, 2010 1:19 PM | Link to this
The more interesting book will be the one that former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis will write. I am more interested in his view of having Merril Lynch stuffed down BOA’s throat by Paulson,Bernake, and Geithner. The old boy network between Wall Street [Paulson], government bureaucrats [Geitner], and politicians, [Frank, Dodd] will be written about by Paulson with rose colored perspective rather than the deer in headlights glaze I recall. May I reccommend another book: “The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O’Neill.” This former Treasury Secretary is a hero and didn’t sell out like Rubin,Summers,Snow and Paulson.