Posted on 10/03/2013 8:49:07 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The standoff between President Barack Obama and Republicans leaders is different from the 2008 financial crisis because this crisis is "self-inflicted," former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told CNBC on Thursday.
"The most basic function of Congress is to pass a budget," Paulson said in a "Squawk Box" interview, exactly five years since his former boss—then-President George W. Bush—signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program financial bailout program into law.
Republicans leaders and the president not only need to come together to fund the government and end the shutdown, but they must reach agreement to increase the debt ceiling before the mid-October deadline, Paulson said. He added that it often takes a crisis like the government shutdown to get something difficult and unpopular done.
As a Republican, he admitted that he's taking a lot of grief over the linkage of the budget issues to delaying Obamacare. "There is one element that does not reflect the views of the Republican party. They have hijacked the debate," he said.
Obama sought to raise the stakes in a CNBC interview on Wednesday—saying that Wall Street needs to be genuinely worried about what is going on in Washington.
Paulson said he hopes it doesn't take another financial crisis to solve these budget problems—a solution that should include an overhaul of the tax code and entitlement reform.
He said he hates the whole concept of the debit limit—calling it a "flaw" in the system. "Congress has already approved the spending. And then say 'you have to then come back and agree to allow us to meet our obligations,' that's ridiculous."
Also appearing on the show Thursday, Warren Buffett said history will judge the TARP bailout more favorably than it appears now.
"If people think the banking system is unsound, it is unsound, because no bank can pay out all of its liabilities at the same time," the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway said.
The current Congress is not bound by the previous Congress and Paulson knows it.
There is no limit if the can gets kicked down the road.
Paulsen I want never to hear from you again, you caused the TARP bailouts which precipitated this mess get lost
So, why does he lie? He says "It takes a crisis to get something difficult and unpopular done". He's referring to the debt ceiling, but that's not difficult to raise at all. What is difficult is cutting the govt. behemoth. Is Paulson playing in the Titanic band because panic wouldn't help anything?
It's kinda like the Thatcher line about socialism: Sooner or later we will run out of people dumb enough to loan us money.
I'm wondering if people aren't starting to realize that we're about to run out of dumb people.
Paulson was at Treasury under Bush. He’s also a former banker. Defending Bush and bankers. Normal biases that everyone carries. I’d be a lot happier if he said there is too much gov’t we can’t afford, get the gov’t out of the economy, and let the too big to fail, fail.
Paulsen is a treacherous traitorous NWO Globalist shill for Goldman Sachs - He is evil incarnate along with Barry Soetoro and his handlers and the Bushies and the Clintons. Quite an eclectic cartel we have ruining our country.
Proof in the Pudding: Nothing has changed since the last meltdown. No one’s gone to prison. Business as usual. Right, Corzine! And Paulsen wants history repeated- what a patriot, that guy....
I was being a little “Glen Beckish” with my post because I wanted to hear your thoughts.
Paulson was tap dancing for sure. He won’t throw Bush or bankers under the bus.
We ran out of dummies the day that the first QE started aka printing money. Most of the money we owe to ourselves. If another entity calls the loan and cashes out, we’ll just pay them off out of this voodoo stash. People who have done this in private sector are in jail. I bet it’s all in an Excel spreadsheet and they just tweak the numbers to balance with a bucket called slush fund.
That isn't difficult. Paulson is simply lying about this.
The media is out to cover for the WH and the ‘Rats. Paulson represents the Bush/banker contingent. Paulson is on a show where every word will be spun and he knows it. Talk about walking into an ambush. But he has his orders. Everyone who is and has been in DC is guilty but nobody wants the target on their back. There is no honor among thieves. The incest is rampant and they are all going down. Wall St, DC, and big media.
We know Wall St went to the WH and told the Clown to fix his mess.
The only fix is to cut spending, stop borrowing, and stop printing.
The Rats are history if they do the right thing, littorally.
The ship just listed left into the water with the top decks taking on water. The roll over is next.
To raise the debt is just a paper change. There is nothing to borrow and printing hasn’t done squat. Just move a few phony numbers on a spreadsheet.
Massive triage is required. Stop the insane spending.
The House has, the Senate hasn't.
The point is that there is no agreement on the actions to be taken. No majority is possible to get behind any one of the thousands (millions) of possible plans. Think of the Weimar Republic with dozens of political parties, many of which developed their own militant wings. The KPD, communist party of Germany had their gang of thugs, along with the thugs of the Socialist Party, the National Socialist Party (Nazi), Nationalists and others. This lead to political violence in the streets.
The Weimar Republic was the prototype of "social democracy'. The government, states and cities ran all kinds of economic organizations, the unions were extremely powerful, the federal government involved itself in all kinds of activities.
When the economy went south with the onset of the depression, it became political war of all against all. The US of A is clearly heading right along this path. The extremism, the openess to violence of the Democrat Party by its base, will lead to a reaction. I'm surprised their hasn't been some politician using black racism as a path to power already.
The supporters of bigger and bigger government from John McCain to Barbara Boxer just simply cannot even consider the implications and trends and results that are going to happen from their activities. As a side note, any Jewish American supporting Big Government is on a path to assisted suicide. All of these Big Government extremists end up as anti-Semites, look at Barack Obama himself. German Jews were fully assimilated in the "most civilized and advanced country in the world" and look what happened to them in a span of only 12 years.
It could happen here. The Democrat Party has been inciting race hatred, class hatred, religion hatred, sexual hatred now for decades. We see the results in the waves of black mob violence, individual race attacks and the political violence by white college-age extremists, like that guy who shot up the traditional family group in DC.
What's the trend? What's the Democrat Party end game? Can they stop themselves?
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