Summary of Treasury Secretary Paulson's exit interview

This afternoon, outgoing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson honored CNBC T.V.'s Maria Bartiromo with an exit interview.

His basic points are in italics.

- It takes a big crisis to make big changes that need to be made in the United States.
- To be successful in any job, it's better to be expansive than narrow, and to solve problems.
- Confidence and sincerity are key to moving the economy up out of the recession.
- Banks need to lend rather than hoard money. (Why not demand accountability retroactively?)
- He says he has learned a lot from his job as Treasury Secretary. (Just one of the benefits of a job that began May 30, 2006)
- He did not want Lehman Brothers to fail. He did not have TARP money then, so he could not save it.

It is not true then, as many say, that the government "wanted" Lehman Brothers to fail.

Wikipedia says: "In August 2007, Secretary Paulson explained that U.S. subprime mortgage fallout remained largely contained due to the strongest global economy in decades." In this interview, he says that he privately told President Bush as soon as he arrived in Washington that there would soon be a serious crisis of the financial system.

Also in Wikipedia: "On August 10, 2008, Secretary Paulson told NBC’s Meet the Press that he had no plans to inject any capital into Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.[21] On September 7, 2008, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into conservatorship."

His future plans, after a rest, involve working for the environment. But "working for the environment" covers everything from home gardening to international oil and energy negotiations, doesn't it? Since it's likely he hasn't planted a pansy for awhile, it isn't hard to guess which way he'll be going.