(indistinct chatter)
Timothy Geithner:
Nice to see you.
Good to see you.
Thanks for coming
All the usual suspects.
It's a pretty good
concentration of talent.
(lively chattering)
(indistinct conversation)
Barney Frank:
Are you in the middle
of the China mess now?
Oh yeah,
I'm in the middle
of the China mess.
I'm going back on forth
on that. It is a mess.
-Professor. Tycoon.
-Good to see you.
-How are you, sir?
-Tycoon. (giggles)
Hi, Janet.
How are you?
It's nice
to see you, Barney.
Can you imagine putting
different administrations...
-No, it's amazing.
-...different parties together?
Franklin Roosevelt told
Herbert Hoover,
-see you in March.
-Go fuck yourself. Yeah.
-Exactly! Great.
-(laughing)
Ben Bernanke:
How come I got
Paul Giamatti to play me,
and you got Billy Crudup
or somebody?
I changed my view,
after going through all this,
about housing.
It's hard to keep
people in their homes,
you know, if they can't
afford to stay in their home.
Andrew Sorkin:
This dinner is
a remarkable moment.
It brought together
all of the players
from the financial crisis
of 2008.
The people who were
actually in the room,
in the moment,
to have a conversation
about what went right
and what went wrong.
In the 2008
financial panic,
there's no playbook
for this stuff,
there's no road map,
there's no...
instruction manual
on what to do.
Bernanke:
We're trying to think
of the most hated
moment in the crisis.
Geithner:
Yeah, there's a lot...
of candidates.
-I think the most hated
program was AIG, by far.
-Yeah.
Sorkin:
But when you think about
this group of people,
Hank Paulson,
Ben Bernanke,
and Tim Geithner,
and you think
about their
different experiences,
their sensibility,
how they approach life...
-(laughter)
-Oh, my God!
Sorkin:
In Hank, you have
the dealmaker.
His word is his bond.
If he says he's
good for something,
he's good for it.
We've come up with
a whole bunch of policies,
which are about
jobs and growth.
Sorkin:
Ben Bernanke, he was
an economics professor
at Princeton.
He had spent
his whole career
thinking about
and studying
the Great Depression.
He was built
for this moment.
I have a research paper
that I'm giving on Thursday
at the Brookings Papers
fall meetings on the crisis.
Sorkin:
And then there's
Tim Geithner.
You know, some people
thought he looked
too young for the job
or he looked like
he worked
on Wall Street.
But he was
a government guy.
He had spent
his whole career
in government
working on global
financial panics.
Geithner:
I remember McConnell
saying to me in January,
"We're against almost
everything you're doing,
and we're gonna
fight you on all of it,
and it's working for us."
Sorkin:
It's pretty remarkable
to think about
how they came together,
and what ultimately
happened.
The 2008
financial crisis was
far beyond
the confines of Wall Street.
The good news is
that the economy rebounded.
The bad news is
how the public understands
and thinks about what happened.
Because of
the financial crisis,
today there is
distrust in government.
There's distrust
in the big institutions.
There's distrust
in this idea of elites.
It has lead
to the populism
that we see
in our politics today.
It's a straight line.
Newsman:
Big trouble for millions
of American homeowners
as a slowing
housing market has turned
some mortgages
into time bombs.
Newswoman:
One failed mortgage
might not threaten
the whole financial system,
millions of them could.
(echoing):
...millions of them...
...millions of them...
Newswoman 2:
Thirty-four subprime
mortgage companies
have gone bust in just
the last few months.
Newsman:
Bear Stearns is hurting.
The stock cut in half,
investors, in general,
cutting out.
Newswoman:
Fannie and Freddie may not
have enough money on hand
to stay in business.
Paulson:
If you're used to thinking
about the issues,
it is very intuitive
that if you've
got a bazooka,
and people know
you've got it, you may
not have to take it out.
Jim Cramer:
Bernanke needs to open
the discount window.
He has no idea how
bad it is out there!
He has no idea!
Newsman:
The Dow tumbled
more than 500 points
after two pillars
of the Street tumbled
over the weekend.
Lehman Brothers
filed for bankruptcy.
Newsman 2:
The Dow Industrials
finished
with their worst one-day
point loss in history,
down 777 points.
George W. Bush:
If our nation continues
on this course,
the economic damage will
be painful and lasting.
Barack Obama:
For this is no longer
just a Wall Street crisis.
This is
an American crisis,
and it's
the American economy that
needs this rescue plan.
Rick Santelli:
How many of you
people want to pay
for your neighbor's
mortgage,
that has an extra bathroom
and can't pay their bills?
-Raise their hand.
-(booing)
President Obama,
are you listening?
(echoing):
...listening?
...you listening?
Man: We are tired
of the one percent
of the one percent
and what they have
done to the country,
what they've done
to the world.
Government is finished.
Donald Trump:
This American
carnage stops
right here,
and stops right now.
Bush:
Good morning.
Welcome to the White House.
In the first quarter
of 2006,
the US economy grew
at an annual rate of 5.3%,
the fastest growth
in two and a half years.
We added 5.2 million new
jobs since August of 2003.
Josh Bolten:
When I became
chief of staff
at the beginning of 2006,
the president
gave me a mandate
to refresh the cabinet.
I felt strongly
that the president
needed a secretary
of the treasury
who was experienced
in the markets,
and whom the markets
would respect,
and Hank Paulson
really stood out.
He is the leader
of Goldman Sachs,
perhaps the most successful
financial institution
in the history
of the world
at that time.
Josh Bolten, who was
the chief of staff
to George Bush,
called and made a pitch.
I talked with people
around me,
and no one advised me
that that was
the right thing to do.
First, he said his family
would be against it.
His wife was a friend
and classmate
of Hillary Clinton.
Paulson:
My wife, Wendy,
clearly didn't want to,
and I...
didn't want to.
So, I turned it down
a couple of times.
Wendy's reticence
came largely
from the work years ago,
when I was
in the White House.
I went to the Nixon
White House.
Great sense of timing,
six weeks before
the Watergate break-in.
And what Wendy
didn't like had to do
with the whole
political scene.
But a few weeks later,
they came back.
It had occurred to me,
the reason I was
turning this down
was, you know,
due to fear of failure.
And I tell you,
as soon as that hit me,
I just reversed on a dime.
Bush:
Hank came up
to the Treaty Room,
there,
in the White House.
He was reluctant,
but he wanted to serve
the country.
And I assured
him of one thing
that I think was
important to Hank,
and that is when he
picked up the phone
and called me,
I'd answer it.
In other words, he wouldn't
have to battle his way
through a lot
of layers of staff.
He agreed to come,
and one of
the best decisions I made
in my presidency.
Good morning.
Welcome to the White House.
I'm pleased to announce
that I will nominate
Henry Paulson
to be the Secretary
of the Treasury.
Paulson:
Our economy's
strength is rooted
in the entrepreneurial spirit
and the competitive zeal
of the American people,
and in our free and open market.
It is truly a marvel,
but we cannot take
it for granted.
Bernanke:
I didn't know Hank before
he came to Washington.
It was customary
for the Fed chairman
and the Treasury
secretary
to meet at least
once a week,
over breakfast
or lunch.
We both liked oatmeal,
so we used to have
an oatmeal breakfast,
either in my dining room
or in the Treasury dining room.
Hank was a markets person.
He had been
very successful
on Wall Street.
He's very high-energy.
He and I are very
different people.
I tend to be,
personally,
kind of quiet.
I was an economics
professor, full stop.
I liked being
an economics professor,
and I never expected
to be at the Fed
or in government.
But in 2002,
I got a call
from the White House:
They needed to fill a slot
on the Board of Governors
at the Federal Reserve.
Would I be interested?
I recognized that
I had been spending
my academic career
studying monetary policy
and financial markets,
and that maybe
I could put
some of that to use.
And moreover, it was just
a few months after 9/11,
and I was kind of feeling
that it was important for me
to do some public service.
Today, I'm honored
to announce that I'm
nominating Ben Bernanke
to be the next chairman
of the Federal Reserve.
Geithner:
You could say Ben was
the academic who grew up
studying the mistakes made
in the Great Depression,
why financial systems
matter to economies.
You know, Hank
had spent his life in markets,
and I had spent my life
in the policy world,
really dealing
with financial crises.
I first met Tim
when he became
the president
of the New York Fed.
Well, the New York Fed
is, probably,
the most important
of the 12 Federal
Reserve Banks,
and the president
of the New York Fed
has traditionally been
the Fed's eyes
and ears on Wall Street.
Geithner:
I think we all had
something in common,
which is, you know,
anybody who had grown
their life in markets
understands that
markets aren't always
self-correcting.
So, I think we all shared
a view about this tenuous
fragility of the system.
And we really did trust
each other.
Paulson:
When I arrived
in July of 2006,
I thought there was
a very good chance
that in the two and a half
years I was in Washington,
we would be facing
a financial crisis.
But the things
that I was concerned about
turned out not to be
the biggest problem.
Jamie Dimon:
It was March 13th, which
happens to be my birthday.
I was at Avra,
this Greek restaurant,
which is down here,
with my parents, my family.
The CEO of Bear Stearns
called me,
it was maybe nine o'clock
at night, and said,
"Jamie, I need $29 billion
before Asia opens,
or we're gonna have
to declare bankruptcy."
And I said,
"Alan, I can't possibly lend
you $29 billion overnight."
Newsman:
Bear Stearns,
one of the most
admired firms in America,
now one of
the most in danger.
Newsman 2:
The firm has
been buffeted
by constant rumors
of a looming
liquidity problem.
Sorkin:
What happened
at Bear Stearns
was the first true demonstration
of what the crisis looked like,
because it was
a crisis of confidence.
Bear Stearns owned
a huge piece of
the housing business,
and they had taken on
some of the worst risk.
All of a sudden,
all sorts of investors
on Wall Street said,
"I don't think
that Bear Stearns
is good for the money.
"And not only do I not think
they're good for the money,
I gotta get my money
out of there immediately."
Newsman:
Bear Stearns is
the biggest casualty yet
of the nation's
mortgage mess.
Newsman 2:
The company has
become a poster boy
for the real estate
bubble.
Paulson:
We knew that there were
excesses in housing,
and we missed it totally.
Homeownership went,
very sadly,
from shelter to an investment.
When I had joined
Goldman Sachs in 1974,
the industry was
growing in many ways.
You saw an evolution
in modern finance.
You began to see different
forms of securitizations.
Bethany McLean:
Mortgage-backed securities
really came into being
in the 1980s.
They had started
as a really good idea,
which made
a lot of sense,
which was a way
to take mortgages,
package them up,
and sell off
the cash flows.
So, an investor
would buy a portion
of all these mortgages,
and the mortgages
would pay that investor.
And the idea was that made
investing in mortgages
much less risky
because instead
of investing in just me,
you were investing
in a thousand people.
Austan Goolsbee:
As we moved
to securitization,
we had cheaper mortgages.
If you could afford
20% down, fine,
but if you couldn't,
let's say you have
five percent,
let's say I had one percent,
let's say you had zero percent--
we came up with
all these ways to
get loans to more people.
You know, it certainly
felt exciting at the time
that we were gonna spread
the American dream
all over the place.
Newsman:
It's a record year
for housing
and it shows
no signs of abating.
In the early 2000s,
the price of borrowing
to finance a house
was very low, very attractive.
Newswoman:
These exotic loans
have exploded
in the last three years:
interest-only loans,
adjustable-rate loans,
no down payment options.
McLean:
People who
were earning
like, a thousand
dollars a month,
working as a gardener,
or working as a hair stylist,
saying they were
making $10,000 a month,
because you could do
these things called
stated income loans,
which came to be
known as "liar loans,"
where you could just say,
"Here's what I make,"
and nobody would check.
And so, you could
get away with murder.
Newsman:
Demand for these
million-dollar-plus homes
has outpaced supply.
You've got speculators
buying multiple houses,
people are flipping.
Your neighbor,
who's not as smart
as you are,
but nevertheless,
went out and bought
a couple of houses
and flipped them,
is now driving
a better car than
you are, and you say,
"Yeah, that does make
pretty good sense.
I wish I'd started earlier."
Sheelah Kolhatkar:
As the housing
market heated up,
there were asset
management firms
around the world
that all wanted
a way to benefit.
McLean:
Most things
on Wall Street start
with a concept that
makes a lot of sense.
The thing about Wall Street
is they take everything
to an extreme.
Goolsbee:
They take thousands
of mortgages
and staple them together.
And they go to investors
and they say,
"What do you want?
You want safe?
You want risky?
We got all these mortgages!"
Sorkin:
There was an incentive
to chop up these loans
because along the way,
there was a profit,
a fee to take
for each institution
that somehow touched
every piece of the loan.
Newsman: Goldman Sachs,
with quarterly profits
up 93%...
John Mack:
Everyone was making
a lot of money
because of
the housing market,
the liquidity
of globalization.
Newsman:
Top executives
will earn as much
as 20 to 50 million
dollars each.
Dimon:
There's the booming 2000s.
People are making
so much money.
I can make 10, 15, 20, 30,
100 to 200 million dollars,
and so there was
this competition,
which was ridiculous.
Sorkin:
Chuck Prince was
the CEO of Citigroup,
and he had
an amazing line,
which was, "While the music's
playing, you gotta dance."
Newsman:
Big bonuses are driven
simply by profits
and competition.
Everybody was looking at
the success of Goldman Sachs,
and of Morgan Stanley,
and of Lehman Brothers,
all of whom are making
more and more profits.
Newsman:
The company will
distribute a record high
$16.5 billion
in compensation.
And so there was
this remarkable pressure
on everybody to keep dancing.
McLean:
Another part
of what drove this was
belief that home prices
would never go down.
Newsman:
The shaky housing market's
starting to crack
at the foundation.
Newswoman:
Particularly
hard-hit markets:
Miami, Vegas,
Northern Virginia,
and right here in DC.
Historically, house prices
have been somewhat
disconnected across
different parts of the country,
but this housing bubble
did end up being national,
and it did have
implications for
the whole economy.
Newswoman:
The real estate bubble,
everybody knows,
has burst.
Newswoman 2:
This is the hangover
after the great
frat party
you went to.
House prices started to fall,
economies started to slow.
Newswoman:
Those adjustable-rate
mortgages
are now coming due.
Geithner:
People who had
bought these
adjustable-rate mortgages,
when they started to reset,
they couldn't
afford to make
the higher payments.
They tried
to refinance them,
but their house prices
declined in value,
so they couldn't
refinance them.
Newswoman:
Foreclosures are up
over a thousand percent.
Some people start defaulting
on their mortgage payments,
and now, that begins
to ripple through.
Bernanke:
It was very, very bad.
A lot of people lost
their homes.
A lot of people lost
their savings.
Newsman:
Those falling home prices
are like an infection,
now spreading
throughout the US economy.
Goolsbee:
The system's not
designed to function
in an environment where
house prices are going down.
So, these mortgage-backed
securities start to unravel,
and you got problems.
Newsman:
Investor confidence
in the mortgage financing
space is not doing well.
Paulson:
There was so little
transparency,
and so little confidence
in these securities,
that financial institutions
were struggling.
Buffett:
I looked
at one offering
of mortgage-backed
securities.
I would've had to read
over 300,000 pages
to analyze that mortgage.
Bush:
I had some of the smartest
people in America
who couldn't explain to me
what some of these
instruments meant.
And it was just
like inventing more
and more product
in order to achieve
higher and higher returns.
It was taking bigger
and bigger risks.
Mack:
Unfortunately,
maybe this is the weakness
of the Street back then...
Man:
How aggressive does
he wanna be? Maybe a lot.
...I think discipline
was kind of lacking.
It was ourselves,
Lehman, Goldman,
Bear Stearns, others,
the amount of risk
we were taking was
out of control.
Newsman:
Today, Bear Stearns' stock
dropped nearly 50%,
a loss of
three billion dollars.
Newsman 2: The rapid change
in Bear Stearns over
the past 48 hours,
it reintroduces anxieties
about what's not known.
Newsman 3:
The complete
lack of confidence
in Bear Stearns,
a run on the bank.
The Fed's job
is to prevent
a catastrophe.
Paulson:
This was a four-alarm fire.
It became very clear
to us that Bear Stearns
wasn't gonna exist
on Monday
if there wasn't a solution.
The markets were so fragile
and so interconnected,
that we were gonna
have to do
some pretty repugnant things
if we were gonna save
the American economy
for the American people.
Bush:
Hank came in and said,
"Bear Stearns is failing,
and we got to do
something about it."
And my first reaction
was, "Why?
"They made bad
investments, Hank.
"And, sadly, the people
that invested in Bear Stearns,
"and sadly,
those who worked
for Bear Stearns
"are gonna have to pay
the price of working
for an entity-made
bad investment."
He said,
"You don't understand.
"If they fail,
it's gonna affect
the international
financial system."
Paulson:
I had been told
there was no authority
for the Fed,
or anyone else,
to guarantee the liabilities
of a failing non-bank.
There is nothing
more terrifying
than feeling a great
sense of responsibility
and not having
the authorities you need.
You know, we had each other,
in some sense,
to talk through options
and strategy,
and that helped a lot.
Paulson:
Ben, Tim, and I, we talked
multiple times a day.
Bolten:
We always treated
the three of them
kind of as one entity,
and the president
always wanted to know
when he was getting
a recommendation from Hank,
what do Ben and Tim feel?
Bernanke:
I remember having
a conference call
where Hank and Tim
and I talked about
what the implications might be
for the financial system
if Bear Stearns failed,
and what we could do.
What we decided that morning
was to buy some time,
to get through the weekend.
Congress had given the Fed
this emergency tool
that we could use
in extreme crisis
to lend... to an institution
that was not a bank.
So, we had
authority to lend,
but the Fed had not
done something like this
since the Great Depression.
Paulson:
Ben Bernanke made
a really bold decision
to extend a loan
for 28 days.
The Federal Reserve agreed,
basically, to help finance
about $30 billion
of Bears' risky assets.
This was the first important
intervention that we did,
and it was a tough call.
I was a registered
Republican. I, um,
believed in market solutions
to economic problems.
But I was a student
of the Great Depression.
When I went
to graduate school,
I knew I wanted
to do economics,
but I didn't know
what area.
And I said to myself,
the Great Depression
was one of the most
important events of
the 20th century.
About a third of
all the banks in
the United States failed,
and that, in turn,
created a tremendous
contraction
in the amount of
credit available
to ordinary households
and businesses.
My grandfather's
drug stores
kept going out of
business in the 1930s,
and it created enormous
hardships for many,
many years.
Later on, when I was
a policy maker,
I took to heart the idea
that allowing
the financial system
to collapse,
and the credit
system to collapse,
was going to be extremely
dangerous for the whole economy,
and that was why it was
so important to make the loan.
Newsman:
Bear Stearns
was forced to take
an emergency loan
funded by all of us.
The taxpayer bailout
prompted investors
to dump
Bear Stearns' stock.
Paulson:
As Bear Stearns
was going down,
President Bush
was scheduled to be
in Wall Street,
to make a speech at
the New York Economic Club.
Man:
...the 43rd President
of the United States.
-Mr. President,
the floor is yours.
-(applause)
Paulson:
He had showed
the speech to me,
and he had a line
in it that said that
there would be no bailouts.
I started off by saying,
"You can take that line
out about no bailouts."
Newsman:
President Bush
tried to make light
of a grim situation.
Seems like I showed up in a...
-interesting moment.
-(chuckling)
I was unhappy about it,
you know?
I was a free marketer.
I told people that, you know,
and firmly believed it,
and still do, by the way.
But Hank is
a persuasive guy,
and I trusted him.
Paulson:
Then what became apparent
was a loan that was permissible
for the Fed to make,
no way was it gonna stop
an investment bank
from disintegrating.
And fortunately,
JP Morgan was a buyer.
Dimon:
It's a really risk thing,
buying a big
investment bank.
It was a house on fire.
It was collapsing.
Hank and Tim were,
"I want you to buy it.
You wanna buy it.
You should buy it."
I said, "We'll do
anything we can to help.
"I can't be irresponsible
to JP Morgan.
I can't end up being
a teetering giant after this."
Paulson:
He wanted to own
Bear Stearns.
There's no doubt about it.
I had gone to bed
on Saturday night,
thinking we had a deal.
Dimon:
At one point, on Sunday,
I called up Hank and said,
"Hank, we can't do it.
It's a bridge too far."
And then,
we started working on,
well, what could
you do to do it?
Which is why
we had this idea,
well, if the Fed could
finance this 30 billion,
we can handle
the rest of it.
Sorkin:
Bear Stearns has
a bag, let's say,
of garbage,
let's just say it's trash.
And nobody wants to buy all
of Bear Stearns and the trash.
Jamie Dimon says,
I'll buy Bear Stearns
but you guys are
going to have to share
the trash with me.
You, Tim Geithner,
and Ben Bernanke,
and Hank Paulson,
you got to take the trash out.
Newsman:
It would be like
Fox bailing out NBC.
JP Morgan Chase joins
the Federal Reserve
in a frantic attempt
to rescue Bear Stearns.
That was very controversial
because that was, in essence,
the first proto-bailout.
Protesters:
Main Street, not Wall Street!
Sorkin:
People woke up on Monday
and thought that it was
the heist of the century.
Protesters:
Main Street, not Wall Street!
Sorkin:
People thought Jamie
had stolen Bear,
and people thought
that Hank had basically
given away the store
by taking on $30 billion
of terrible crapola.
Protesters:
We want Dimon!
We want Dimon!
Sorkin: And that was
the beginning of this
debate in the country
about what was happening,
how bad it was gonna be,
and whether we should
be doing any of this.
Protesters:
We want Dimon!
CEO! CEO! CEO!
Communication was a really
tough issue during the crisis.
None of us were able to
convince the public
that what we did
was not for Wall Street,
but it was for
the American people.
Bail out working
women and men,
who worked hard
to buy their homes!
That's why we say,
Not Wall Street...
Protesters:
But Main Street!
Paulson:
We should've done
a better job
of explaining the financial
system was so concentrated
and so intertwined,
that if you wanna stop
the bleeding,
you've gotta go to the source,
and the source is Wall Street.
And if you don't stop
the bleeding at Wall Street,
you kill the economy.
This was
an extraordinary period.
There was this
presidential election
going on.
We had these
two candidates,
both running against
President Bush
because he was
very unpopular.
We need to bring real
change to Washington
and we have to fight for it!
(cheering)
That was a bad period
for President Bush.
Remember, we're
still in the midst
of the war in Iraq,
and President Bush was
generally unpopular
in the public,
partly as a result.
Bush:
When you're president,
you don't make decisions
based upon your
personal popularity.
You don't have to be a PhD
to know it's unpopular
to spend taxpayers'
money on Wall Street.
That may be okay in New York,
but you get out
to Midland, Texas,
it's not okay.
Paulson: You know,
it was pretty clear
what the public
wanted to hear.
It's very easy to tap
into that populist strain,
and be against bailouts
and putting government
money in anything.
Mismanagement and greed
became the operating standard,
while regulators were
asleep at the switch.
(cheering)
I won't let banks
and lenders off the hook
when it was their greed
and irresponsibility
that partially got
us into this mess.
We should not be
bailing out
just Wall Street.
We should be restoring
opportunity on Main Street.
(cheering)
It was a bum deal
for people.
You got folks
out there, teachers
and construction workers,
small business people,
single moms,
and they're working hard.
They're acting responsibly.
To the extent that they were
involved in any of this,
it's that some
mortgage broker tells them
they can afford a house,
that they don't know.
It looks like
they can afford it.
And suddenly,
folks are getting wiped out.
-Hi. How are you? Good.
What's your name?
-Karen.
Obama:
And the problem you had,
the dynamic you had
at that juncture,
is that the actions
that are necessary
to save
the financial system
are, by any definition,
bad politics.
Thank you, man.
I appreciate you.
I describe it as a clash
between politics and markets,
and of course,
both are important, but,
at the end, markets win.
Brian Williams:
The housing market,
in plain English,
is coming apart.
Paulson:
As 2008 progressed,
the crisis intensified.
We were all concerned
about Fannie and Freddie,
but we didn't know
how bad it was.
Newswoman:
Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac
are the backbone of
the US mortgage market,
holding roughly half
of all US mortgages.
Newswoman 2:
Fannie and Freddie may not
have enough money on hand
to stay in business.
McLean:
The first thing you
have to understand
about Fannie
and Freddie is that
they are so important
to the machinery
of everyone's
everyday life.
Any person who
has a mortgage,
it's pretty likely that
Fannie and Freddie
touches you.
They were publicly
traded companies,
like any company
you would invest in,
like Starbucks,
like Apple, like Google,
and yet they were
known as government-sponsored
enterprises
because there was this idea
that the US government
stood behind their debt.
So that, if they ever
couldn't pay their debt,
the US government
would step in.
Goolsbee:
They got a government
money-printing machine,
in which the government
implicitly says,
"If everything goes wrong,
we'll foot the bill."
McLean:
That was a guarantee.
It was written
nowhere on paper.
It didn't actually exist,
and so it came to be known
by this term called,
the "implicit guarantee."
Paulson:
There was no guarantee,
but the market assumed
that there was.
So, you had management
teams and shareholders
making money off
a government guarantee.
Bernanke: They insured
something on the order
of five trillion dollars.
Something close to half
of all the mortgages
in the United States
were insured and resold
by Fannie and Freddie.
McLean:
The fear was if Fannie
and Freddie defaulted,
that would throw the global
financial system into chaos.
Newswoman:
The companies' stock
prices off more than 85%
since the credit crisis
began last August.
Paulson:
They've announced
huge losses.
Their stock is diving.
So I needed to ask Congress
for enough money
to calm the markets.
Chris Dodd:
Thanks Secretary Paulson,
and the Chairman of
the Federal Reserve.
We thank Chairman Bernanke
for his involvement.
Paulson:
This was a tough
political ask
with the members
of Congress.
I felt we needed...
expansive authorities.
One of the proposals that
you've suggested is an increase
in the Treasury line of credit
for Fannie and Freddie.
I have some concerns, and I
suspect my colleagues do, too,
about having no cap,
no limit at all.
Paulson:
If I asked for 100 billion,
it wouldn't be enough,
and I certainly
knew I couldn't ask
for a number that started
with a T, trillion.
How much money are you
contemplating here?
I would ask for it
to be unspecified.
For some of us, it sounds
a little bit like a blank check.
Congressman:
You're talking about
potentially spending
a trillion dollars here.
We're a little skeptical.
Bernanke:
One of the tough
things about testimony
was that you had
multiple audiences.
So, you're sitting
at this table with
a glass of water,
you're looking up
at the senators,
and so you're trying
to answer their questions,
but you know at the same
time that you're talking
to the TV camera,
which is going out
to American public,
and then your
staff member
behind you
gives you a piece
of paper which says,
"Dow Jones down
180 points."
So, you're also
talking to the markets.
Paulson:
I looked at those hearings
as largely theater.
I was worrying about saving
the financial system
for the American people.
These guys wanted to save
the financial system,
but they wanted
to get elected.
But I really believed
what I said when I was
testifying.
I said, you know,
if you give us
unspecified authorities,
it'll be so powerful
that we won't have
to use them.
If you've got a squirt gun
in your pocket,
you may have to take it out.
If you've got a bazooka,
and people know you've got it,
you may not have to take it out.
You're not likely
to take it out.
By having something
that is unspecified,
it will increase confidence,
and by increasing confidence,
it will greatly
reduce the likelihood
it will ever be used.
Geithner: You know,
he had this tremendously
valuable skill,
which is how to convince
people to do something
they did not think was
in their interest.
Bernanke: It was Hank
in that instance,
and in others,
who kind of laid down
the law and said,
"This is what's gonna happen."
I'm about getting something done
that can get done,
that will make a difference,
and, in my judgment,
is in the best interest
of the taxpayer.
The sense of urgency is
something, I think, all of us,
at least most of us,
here appreciate.
Dodd: Look, we're in
the middle of this thing,
and it's getting worse,
and the secretary
of the Treasury says,
I need some of these tools.
We're in the eye of
the hurricane at that point.
Paulson:
I got the bazooka,
and I didn't think we were
gonna have to take it out,
but the most
aggressive investors
get very quickly to where
the most fearful investors
are faster than
you can imagine.
And so, it was
only a matter of time
till we had to use
the bazooka.
Bernanke:
The takeover of
Fannie and Freddie
was like
a military operation.
Hank was the general.
Paulson:
Congress had no idea
we were thinking of
nationalizing them,
and so, we needed
to keep this quiet.
Bush: Fannie and Freddie
were politically powerful
entities,
I mean, really powerful.
They made people rich.
Most of them were
very well connected.
Bernanke:
We had to do it in a way
that they didn't anticipate,
otherwise they would have
used political and other
forces to prevent it.
I remember talking
to President Bush about this,
and he was asking,
"How can you possibly
get this done
without them knowing
and fighting?"
And I remember--
it just came out of my mouth,
"The first sounds
they're gonna hear is when
their head hits the floor."
This is the full Paulson.
Paulson:
There were
some bitter pills.
The CEOs were replaced.
They were gonna lose
their golden parachutes.
Lester Holt:
History was made when
Washington took the reins
at the two organizations
that back or guarantee
nearly half of
America's home loans.
Today's action
should accelerate
stabilization of
the housing market,
ultimately benefiting
financial institutions.
Naively, I thought, maybe
we've brought down the hammer.
As I told President Bush,
maybe this is
what it's gonna take
to put out the fire.
Newswoman:
It began with a more
than 300-point bounce.
Fannie Bang, we called it.
Paulson:
On Saturday night,
I was sound asleep.
It was an optimistic sleep.
My phone rang.
It was Barack Obama.
How are you, sir?
What's your name?
-Fred.
-Nice to see you, Fred.
Thank you so much.
I wanna give you some
hometown favorites--
Man, I gotta have
my John Deere hat.
Paulson:
On that call, he said,
"Look, I know
I'm going to be President
of the United States."
Obama:
Yeah, at that point,
I was fairly confident
I was going to win
the election,
and I already felt as if I had
some responsibilities for, um,
an economy that I was
going to have to manage,
um, fairly soon.
This is a company
from my home state.
-We make these tractors.
-All right.
Obama:
To Hank's credit,
he was consistently
straightforward and honest
and transparent with us,
and I ended up developing
a good relationship with him
and trusting him.
And it had been
impressed upon me
that if this thing
went sideways,
we could have a depression.
And whatever short-term
political advantage
I might gain from it,
it was not something
that I was going to be
interested in playing.
-It's very nice to meet you.
I'm proud of you.
-Thank you, sir.
Paulson:
He very nicely warned me.
"You better take care of
the Republican candidate
"because if I start
hearing populist,
"anti-bailout rhetoric
from him,
I'm going to have to start
talking that way."
Two years ago,
there was one man
who stood up
and warned us
about the problems
at Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac.
It was John McCain!
Paulson:
The next day, I talked
with John McCain
and Sarah Palin.
I encouraged everybody
to call me Hank.
I did not want to be
Mr. Secretary.
But, somehow or other,
I don't know what it
was on that first call,
the way she immediately
started saying Hank,
the tone of voice,
it just...
it rubbed me
a little bit the wrong way.
Palin:
People in Florida are,
and should be, outraged.
Huge financial institutions
going under because of
their own bad practices,
and now asking the public
to bail them out.
(audience booing)
Despite what her other failings
may or may not have been,
she certainly understood
where the public was
with regard to bailouts.
Protesters:
Main Street,
not Wall Street!
Main Street,
not Wall Street!
Geithner:
Early September,
there was so much
bailout fatigue,
there was
so much opposition,
not just to what we'd done
in Bear Stearns' case,
but to the Fannie
Freddie receivership.
People had no sense
for the perils
of what was happening.
Newswoman:
The economy is like
a house of cards.
The bottom could
still drop out,
sending markets
into a free fall.
Geithner:
I'd grown up
in the Treasury
in a series of crises
that happened to
other countries--
beginning in,
really, '94
with the Mexican
financial crisis.
I then lived through
a whole wave of
really devastating
emerging market financial
crises in Thailand,
Korea, Brazil,
Indonesia...
Newswoman:
In Indonesia,
fears of financial disaster
hit the streets,
with long lines formed
outside supermarkets.
Geithner: I could see,
you know, how deep
the depressions were,
how tragic were the costs,
and how hard it was
for people to figure out
a way to navigate
their way through it.
It had a huge impact on me,
of course.
Panics are different
from all other crises,
and in a panic,
you have to use
overwhelming force
because you have
to convince people
it's safe
not to run, not to panic.
And to do that,
you have to muster
a wall of money.
Newswoman:
Lehman taking a beating
right now, down about 35%.
It hasn't traded
this low since 1998.
Sorkin:
Lehman, in particular,
both was leveraged,
but more importantly,
had taken on a huge
amount of real estate.
And that real estate,
every day was being
marked down even more.
Newswoman:
Another tough day
for shares
of Lehman Brothers today.
CEO Dick Fuld is actively
shopping the entire
brokerage firm.
Buffett:
Dick Fuld was
looking for capital.
He contacted us.
I had talks with him.
I came down on a...
Friday night, I remember,
and looked through
a 200-and-some-page 10-K
and scribbled a lot
of notes on it.
I still have the 10-K.
And by the time
I got all through,
I knew we weren't
going to make a deal.
Geithner:
By that week
in September,
they were close
to out of options.
Newsman: The debate now
is the role the government
will play in all of this.
Newsman 2: Treasury
Secretary Hank Paulson
and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke
are behaving
like socialists
and "should resign."
That is what
Kentucky Senator
Jim Bunning says.
They both should be fired.
First, for Bernanke
not watching the store,
and Paulson
because he didn't
tell the banking
committee the truth.
Hank, in particular,
was taking a lot
of the heat for, quote,
"being the bailout king,"
and the like.
Newsman:
If it's $200 billion
for this bailout,
it was $300 billion
for the housing bailout,
it was $30 billion
for Bear Stearns.
I mean,
where does it end?
Newsman 2:
Now there are rumors that
Lehman might be in trouble,
the government
would obviously come
to rescue Lehman.
Paulson:
I made frequent
calls to Dick Fuld.
We had told him repeatedly
that the government
can't put in capital.
Newsman:
Sources close to Treasury
Secretary Hank Paulson,
saying there
will be, quote,
"No government money
in the resolution
of this situation."
He puts the word
out to the street.
"We are not
in the bailout business."
Geithner:
I did call Hank saying,
you're gonna regret that
'cause it's not gonna get solved
without more public money.
He said,
"I understand that."
This was a tactic,
plain and simple.
If we didn't
communicate that,
all the other
Wall Street banks
would believe
that the Fed,
you know, would be there
to put capital in.
We had two potential
buyers for Lehman.
The first was
Bank of America.
The second
potential acquirer
was a British bank
called Barclays.
We assumed that there
would be some bad assets.
The hope was to keep
the Fed out of it, if possible,
and to get the CEOs from
the other Wall Street firms
to get involved in,
in buying those,
or holding those
assets in some way.
Newsman:
Wall Street titans and
top government officials
have been huddled
in emergency meetings,
scrambling to prevent
the collapse
of the giant investment
bank Lehman Brothers.
I convened the heads
of the major firms
in New York that evening.
Newswoman:
The best financial
brains in the world
are in pressured
negotiations to resolve
the fate of Lehman Brothers.
Sorkin:
This is like
the Five Families.
Every major character
on Wall Street.
This is Jamie Dimon
of JP Morgan.
This is John Thain
of Merrill Lynch.
Vikram Pandit
of Citigroup.
Lloyd Blankfein
of Goldman Sachs.
John Mack
of Morgan Stanley.
Mack:
I thought it was exactly
the right thing to do.
They had a problem
to solve,
and their problem
was my problem.
Paulson:
These CEOs
were all scared,
and they were scared about what
Lehman going down might mean.
Geithner:
I said, you know,
you're all exposed too.
We don't have the means
to protect you from this.
Sorkin:
And they were effectively
being given an assignment.
Hank and Tim are the school
teachers telling the children,
you're gonna be
broken up into groups
to come up with a deal
to ring-fence these assets.
No one's saying, "Oh shit,
I don't wanna do this."
But it was complicated.
I mean, all of a sudden,
you're looking
at all this data.
Newswoman:
The banking crisis forcing
another long weekend
of work in both Washington
and New York.
Newswoman 2:
Top executives
of rival banks
met under tight security
to discuss plans
to buy Lehman
whole or in parts.
It turns out that one
of the potential buyers
really had no interest
in Lehman.
Newswoman:
Bank of America is
now reported to be
to be in advanced talks
to buy Merrill Lynch.
Newsman:
A shotgun wedding
arranged in two days.
The fact that Bank of America
purchased Merrill Lynch
took another serious
problem off our hands.
Paulson:
But Barclays sure
seemed very interested,
and identified
the assets that
need to be left behind,
and I think the banks
were largely on board
to step up and take it.
Mack:
We were all under
the impression
that this was
gonna go through.
Sorkin:
There's one major hitch,
which is
the British government.
(bell chiming)
Tim Geithner
and Hank Paulson
get a phone call.
Bernanke:
There were several
people they spoke to,
including
the bank supervisor...
-(cameras clicking)
-...but the decision
maker was
the chancellor
of the Exchequer,
the secretary
of the Treasury,
essentially, of the UK,
who was named
Alistair Darling.
And the British said that
for Barclays to buy Lehman
would be like importing
the US cancer.
Bush:
Hank called and said,
"The British will not allow,
"you know, the British
bank to take over Lehman,
and it's gonna fail."
Paulson:
I was very angry.
It was a very
unpleasant surprise.
Sorkin:
Hank told the staff,
he said,
"The British grin-fucked us."
And Hank walked
into the other room,
and said to the CEOs,
it's over.
Newsman:
Wall Street in crisis mode
this morning.
Lehman Brothers
says it will file
for Chapter 11
bankruptcy today.
The Journal and The Times
editorial on Monday morning,
I would say,
expressed relief
that the Fed
hadn't intervened.
Paulson:
I'll tell you,
none of the three of us
looked at that as
a positive event.
We didn't know how
bad it was gonna be,
but we knew it was bad.
Paulson:
Good afternoon,
everyone,
and I hope you all had
an enjoyable weekend.
(laughter)
Yeah.
Monday afternoon,
I was standing
in the White House,
in front of
the press corps,
you know, putting the best
face I could on Lehman.
As you know, we're working
through a difficult period
in our financial
markets right now.
Lehman was
a massive mistake,
and I think...
maybe those who were
involved in that decision
will still defend it,
but I think when you look
at the tremors afterwards,
I think that goes
down as one of
the most colossal
mistakes ever.
Bernanke: There's
a lot of retrospective
analysis and so on.
I think people
need to appreciate
that all these decisions
had to be made in real time,
in very, very
time-pressured situations.
We could have lent
money to Lehman,
but it would not have
been enough or sufficient
to prevent the company
from failing.
There was a broad-based
run going on throughout
the entire company,
not just on its
short-term funding,
but on its derivatives,
and on many other
aspects of its business,
and so, the company
was not savable.
Goolsbee:
For the people
who believe
that if they had
just saved Lehman,
then there would be
no financial crisis,
you're being naive.
If it weren't Lehman,
it would've been
Morgan Stanley.
It would've been somebody,
because the fundamentals
were so bad.
Newswoman:
The Dow fell
by 4.4% today,
more than 500 points,
the worst one-day
point drop since 9/11.
Dimon:
After Lehman,
I remember I called my
management team and said,
you're gonna see
the worst week ever
in the financial history
of the United States.
Paulson:
It was a huge
liquidity problem.
The bank interlending market
was drying up.
Geithner:
You know, any institution
across the United States--
Caterpillar,
GM, Ford, Chrysler,
Harley Davidson--
anybody whose
existence depended on
the ability of your
customers to borrow
or your ability to borrow,
at that point,
I think people thought
that, you know, it was dire.
We were a few days away
from the ATMs not working.
Paulson:
I could see the crisis
spreading
very, very quickly,
from Wall Street
to Main Street.
Sorkin:
That week,
one of the largest
McDonald's franchisees
in the country
calls Ken Wilson,
who's working
for Hank Paulson
in the Treasury,
and literally says to him,
"I don't think
I'm gonna be able to
make payroll next week."
Think about that.
And you might say to yourself,
why couldn't McDonald's do this?
Well, guess what?
They rely on Bank of America
to roll their paper,
and they're worried
that Bank of America's
not gonna do it!
Dimon:
The markets were affecting
the real economy.
The markets
were closing down.
People were
cutting back hiring,
cutting back investing,
cutting back spending
to protect themselves.
And you were looking at
what looked like could be
a Great Depression.
I described it as
an economic Pearl Harbor.
The 1929 panic was
nothing like this.
The system had stopped.
Newsman:
A day after the failure
of Lehman Brothers
and the fire sale
of Merrill Lynch,
attention turned to AIG.
Newsman 2:
The world's largest
insurance company,
American
International Group,
is seeking
emergency funding
as it struggles
to stay afloat.
Sorkin:
AIG, effectively,
was insuring all the other
Wall Street banks.
Goolsbee:
Wait a minute!
All your insurance is
from an insurance company
that's about to go bankrupt!
Now, you see how
the fire spreads
from one company
to the next company,
and then everybody looks
and says, "Ooh!"
Newsman:
AIG must raise at least
$40 billion and fast.
Paulson:
AIG, the situation
kept worsening.
And then we got told
that they weren't gonna
make it through the day.
You know,
the need had ballooned,
so it was $85 billion.
Imagine that.
Bernanke:
The Fed can lend
against collateral.
And we essentially
decided
that even though the loan
to AIG would be very large,
that there was enough value in
all these insurance companies
that we could take
it as collateral.
Ali Velshi:
AIG may not have
been too big to fail,
but it was certainly
too interconnected
to the economy to fail.
By Tuesday night,
the AIG saga
is, at least temporarily, over.
They stuff the turkey
with $85 billion,
and they fire the CEO.
Newsman:
Volatility does continue
in a big way today...
Newsman 2:
I think it may be that
the whole AIG bailout
is not enough for
the market in its entirety.
Now, we're talking about
Morgan Stanley going under.
If Morgan goes under,
Goldman goes under.
Geithner:
The two remaining
and independent
investment banks,
Goldman and Morgan Stanley,
are acutely vulnerable.
Paulson:
We worked
quite aggressively
with financial institutions.
I was on the phone, jawboning,
urging them to raise equity.
Mack:
Hank and Tim,
and mainly Hank,
was pushing, at least
Morgan Stanley,
to figure out a way to get
external financing.
Tim said,
"Pick up the phone and call
Jamie. He'll buy your bank."
I said, "Tim.
Yeah, he'll buy it,
for two dollars a share."
He said, "I don't care
what he pays for you.
I want you to do it."
And I said, in one of
my more stupid moments,
"Well, I won't do it.
I'll take the firm down first,"
and I hung up on him.
Who the fuck does that?
On Thursday, Hank came in
with Bernanke, with Geithner,
and started talking
to the president about,
we're gonna need some
legislative authority.
We're kind of
out of ammunition.
Bernanke:
We needed to put capital
into the banking system,
but Hank's concern
about capital injections
was that it would
look like the government
was nationalizing
or taking over,
the banking system.
And so, his idea was
to buy troubled assets.
That's why it was called
the Troubled Asset
Relief Program, the TARP.
Bolten:
About halfway through
the conversation,
the president
interrupted Hank,
and directed
a question at Ben.
Bush:
I asked, are we headed
for a Great Depression?
And Bernanke...
said, you know,
it looks that way.
And you have to make up
your mind, you know?
Do you care?
And what I cared about was
people that would be hurting.
They were already
starting to hurt.
People getting run
out of their homes.
Payrolls couldn't be met.
And I just could envision
what a Great Depression
would mean.
If it's bad now, imagine
how bad it would really get?
Bolten:
As we left that meeting,
the president turned
to us and said,
"If this is Hoover
or Roosevelt,
for damn sure
I'm gonna be Roosevelt."
Nancy Pelosi:
Usually, the secretary
of Treasury
keeps me posted
on the markets,
but I haven't
heard from him in
a couple of weeks.
In that amount
of time, we've had
Lehman Brothers,
Merrill Lynch,
and then AIG.
So I called him,
it was three o'clock
in the afternoon,
to say, can you
be here nine o'clock
the next morning?
To which he said,
"Madam Speaker,
tomorrow morning
will be too late."
(cameras clicking)
So, we planned a meeting
for five o'clock that day.
Hank Paulson and, uh,
Chairman Bernanke
came in.
And Chairman Bernanke
said to the group,
"If you don't give
Hank Paulson what he needs,
"within 72 hours,
"the entire banking system
of the United States will fail,
and then the world
banking system
will fail on top of it."
One of the most
sobering periods
I've ever experienced.
You've gotta be kidding?
I mean, why are
we first meeting now,
we've got 72 hours?
Bernanke:
If anything,
I think I might've
understated in
my predictions
how bad things were
actually gonna get.
Pelosi:
The secretary described
what they wanted to do.
He said,
"We've tested many models,
and we have what we call
our break-the-glass plan."
Bush:
We were gonna buy
troubled assets.
You know.
I'm not sure how,
but we were gonna
buy troubled assets.
Pelosi:
About every 15 minutes,
Majority Leader Reid would say,
"How much is this going to cost?
A hundred billion dollars?"
"No, no, no,"
Hank said. "No, no, no."
Paulson:
We knew it couldn't
start with a T.
I couldn't ask
for a trillion.
I wasn't gonna be able
to get unspecified again,
and so the biggest number
we thought we could get
was $700 billion.
And we thought,
you know, $500 billion
sounds... sounds big,
but $700 billion,
$500 billion, $700 billion--
many people don't know
the difference.
Basically, we wanted it
to be as big as we could get
without spooking Congress,
so it blew up in our face.
I said, "We need
the authorities
immediately,"
and Harry Reid says,
"Congress doesn't do
anything immediately."
And so, it was after that
where we all walked out
-and, late at night,
had a presser.
-(cameras clicking)
We reached a bipartisan
agreement to work together
to try to solve this problem,
and to do it in
an expeditious manner.
I am very impressed
with Chairman Bernanke,
Secretary Paulson, I've said
that on a number of occasions.
We look forward
to working with them,
and we're anxious
to see their proposal,
which we hope to receive
in a matter of hours, not days.
We're coming together to work
for an expeditious solution,
which is aimed...
Paulson:
And, of course,
that was the best thing
that happened for the next...
(laughs)
...the next week.
Because after that,
it was one difficult process.
Newswoman:
Today on behalf
of Main Street,
Congress had a chance
to ask some hard questions
about the
$700 billion bailout
of Wall Street.
Why are we asked
to put $700 billion
to keep CEOs in their office,
while families get kicked
out of their homes?
Jon Tester:
Why do we have one week
to determine $700 billion
that has to be appropriated,
or this country's financial
systems go down the pipes?
I share the outrage
that people have.
It's... It's embarrassing,
uh, to look at this,
and I think it's
embarrassing for the
United States of America.
Their view is, right,
same as all of our view is:
If you take risk
and you make money,
that's fine, great for you.
But if you lose money,
we don't expect
the United States of America
to be there to save you.
Anything that looks like
a bailout is unpopular.
Too many people on Wall Street
have been recklessly wagering,
instead of making the sound
investments we expected of them.
Goolsbee:
The other crazy
thing about this,
this whole thing
is happening
in the middle of
a presidential election!
If you give me your
vote on November 4th,
then together,
we won't just win Florida,
we will win
the general election,
and you and I together,
we're gonna change the country,
and we're gonna change
the world. God bless you.
-God bless America.
Thank you.
-(cheering)
Obama:
Not only have
I assured Paulson
that we are not gonna
play politics with this,
I actually
reach out to McCain,
and suggest to him,
that we should make
a statement
expressing confidence
that we can get through
this difficult period,
that now's not the time
for politics.
He asks me on the phone,
"What would you think about
potentially suspending
the campaign?"
And I say,
"Well, I'm not sure
that it's a good idea
"for you and me
to be in Washington.
That's just gonna
politicize the situation."
Maybe, half an hour passes?
Maybe less?
Uh, before David Plouffe,
my campaign manager,
gets a call,
saying, "Listen, uh...
"John's gonna be
going out in two minutes
to announce that
he's suspending
the campaign."
I said, "No, no, no,
that can't be right.
I just talked to McCain
half an hour ago."
Well, sure enough.
Newsman:
This afternoon,
John McCain
dropped a political
bombshell.
-(cameras clicking)
-Tomorrow morning,
I'll suspend my campaign
and return to Washington.
I'm directing
my campaign to work
with the Obama campaign
to delay
Friday night's debate.
So, there was
some cursing
that took place,
uh, in the room.
Um, that was...
irritating...
to say the least.
Paulson:
McCain had called Bush,
and said he was going
to interrupt his campaign
and wanted to come back
and help solve the problem.
And the president said,
"That is just the stupidest
thing I ever heard."
Newsman:
There was a flurry
of dramatic
developments today,
as economic policy
and power of politics
collided.
So I'm sitting there saying,
"Oh my gosh!
"If he comes out against
what we're doing,
"we'll lose
the Republicans,
"we may lose the Democrats,
"and there goes our economy,
"there goes
our financial system,
here comes another
Great Depression."
It appears to me
that John McCain is
trying to divert attention
to his failing campaign.
It reminded me of
Andy Kaufman as Mighty Mouse.
Oh, here's McCain!
Here he comes to save the day!
Barney Frank, the chief
Democratic negotiator,
said it was
the longest Hail Mary pass
in the history of
football and Marys.
(cameras clicking)
McCain:
I'm calling on
the president
to convene
a leadership meeting
from both houses of Congress,
including Senator Obama
and myself.
Bush:
Hank's dead set
against the meeting.
He doesn't want
the meeting.
But, you know,
if I'd have said no,
it would have really
hurt his campaign.
I called Senator Obama
at the time and said,
"I'm having a meeting
at the White House,
and I'd like for you to come."
Obama:
President Bush was
almost apologetic.
He's saying,
"Look, I don't know how
well this is gonna work.
We'll try to make it
as serious and constructive
as possible."
I say,
"Well, I appreciate that,
Mr. President. I'll be there."
(cameras clicking)
Security:
Keep moving, please.
Keep moving.
It was high-stakes drama.
Paulson:
It was the most
bizarre meeting.
You know, sometimes
history is stranger
than fiction.
Okay,
let's go.
(cameras clicking)
I want to thank the, uh,
leaders of the House
and the Senate for coming.
I appreciate our
presidential candidates
for being here as well.
We are in a serious
economic crisis in the country,
and we know we've got to get
something done as quickly
as possible.
President Bush, ever gracious,
defers to me as speaker,
and I say,
"Thank you, Mr. President.
"Leader Reid
and I have decided
"that we're going
to yield our time
to Senator Barack Obama."
He was very wise about it.
He said, "Listen,
"I've been in touch
with Hank Paulson,
and I'm watching this
crisis very closely."
I had, at that point,
been pretty steeped
in these issues,
and was pretty
familiar with 'em.
And I made my pitch.
"Mr. President,
we want to act responsibly.
We think it's important
that taxpayer money
isn't wasted."
He had a well-crafted
presentation.
The president then
called on McCain,
and McCain said,
"I'll wait my turn."
And there's sort of
a deflation
around the room.
Obama:
John didn't have
much to say.
The problem was, I think,
John still hadn't
really thought through
what exactly his approach
would be at that point.
Paulson:
I knew that that
campaign was staggering.
I knew he couldn't possibly
have developed another plan.
Frank:
McCain doesn't wanna talk,
and finally he said,
"Well, I think
the Republicans
have a perfect right
to offer their plan."
Someone said,
"No one doubts that,
but what do you
think about it?"
Pelosi:
And it was so,
shall we say...
just not there.
Bolten:
I didn't believe
he had a plan.
They thought
it was a really cool
campaign gambit.
They were playing checkers,
not chess.
They had only thought
one move ahead.
Obama:
It was a situation
where I felt
that he hadn't been
served well.
His team needed to make sure
that he had an agenda
that he was bringing to bear,
um, and he didn't,
and the meeting
sort of descended
into a little bit of chaos.
Paulson:
Barney Frank started
shouting at him.
"Where's your plan?
Where's your plan, McCain?"
Frank:
McCain would not say
what he thought about the plan.
Paulson:
The meeting broke down
into a shouting match.
It was chaos and disarray.
Bush:
This thing turned
into a food fight.
Barney Frank yelling
at some Republican guy.
And it got out of control,
and I basically said,
the meeting's over.
Pelosi:
It brought
the meeting to an end.
It brought
the meeting to an end.
Bolten:
It was the most horrifying
and dispiriting meeting
in the White House
that I--
I ever experienced.
Bush:
I asked him not to use
the White House
as a political backdrop.
I said, "Because we're gonna
spook the markets.
"You walk out of here,
and you start giving people
"what happened in the meeting,
and this, that, and the other,
"the markets
are shaky as it is,
and we don't
wanna be a part
of making 'em shakier."
(cameras clicking)
I think you're waiting
on bigger game than me.
Paulson:
Richard Shelby
went running out
and told the press that
our plan was a disaster,
and there was
no support for it.
We hadn't got an agreement.
There's still a lot
of different opinions.
Mine is, it's flawed
from the beginning.
And the Democrats
all went running
into the Roosevelt Room.
Frank:
We're talking about
what Obama is gonna say
in the press conference
afterwards.
Paulson:
I was a little naive
because I thought,
jeez, these are
all my friends, I've been
working with them,
I've been talking
with them regularly.
And I was concerned
that they were gonna run out
and what they were
gonna say to the press.
So I came barging right in,
like I shouldn't have,
and they're all huddled
around Barack Obama,
and I went right up to him
like I was one of them,
and they looked at me.
They said,
"Get out of here!"
Obama:
This is the famous
meeting at which
Hank Paulson,
and only half in jest,
gets down on one knee
and begs Nancy Pelosi
not to torpedo
the TARP legislation.
Pelosi:
Hank knelt down and said,
"Madam Speaker, please bring
the bill to the floor."
And I said,
"Well, you know,
it's not us.
We want a solution.
You have to get the votes
on your side."
Paulson:
The financial crisis was
a life-altering
experience for me.
I would wake up in
the middle of the night,
and I'd look into the abyss,
and I would see food lines,
and I would see
millions and millions
of people unemployed.
It gave me, really,
a new appreciation
for fear that
comes from trauma
and, you know, the impact
on people's lives
when they go through
prolonged periods
of stress.
This was a really tough
period personally.
It went on not just
a few days,
but really for months.
For Lehman weekend,
I basically was
in the office
the entire weekend,
slept on the couch.
Tim essentially lived in
the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York
for quite a few weeks,
as I understand it.
Geithner:
We all had this crushing
burden of responsibility
and this deep fear
of whether the size
of the problem
exceeded our grasp,
the reach of our tools,
the reach of our knowledge
or our competence.
That was a hard
and terrifying time then
because, uh...
we were not certain
whether it would work,
and the world was
pretty confident it wouldn't.
And you know,
the fate of, you know,
the fate of many things
hung in the balance.
Paulson:
I was at Treasury,
and President Bush
came over to see me.
Bush:
Part of the leadership is
to kind of recognize what's
happening on your team.
And it was pretty clear
that Hank was working
himself to near-exhaustion.
So, I tried to go to Wendy,
his bride, and said, "Wendy,
you gotta get him to rest."
I don't know if
it had any effect,
but at least
he had a friend, me.
I said, "Well, if you
really want to know
what I'm concerned about,
I don't want to be
Andrew Mellon."
You know,
Andrew Mellon was
Herbert Hoover's
Treasury secretary
during the Great
Depression.
And he laughed,
and I said, "Well,
what's so funny?
I mean, no one knows him.
They know about Hoover."
The country has
got to have confidence...
in the government's ability
to stave off a crisis.
I learned that
firsthand on 9/11,
that one of the jobs
of a leader
during a crisis is
to not only project calm,
but project confidence that
we'll deal with the situation.
And lo and behold,
my administration started with
a crisis and it ended with one.
Bush:
There will be
ample opportunity
to debate the origins
of this problem.
Now is the time
to solve it.
In our nation's history,
there have been moments
that require us to come
together across party lines
to address major challenges.
This is such a moment.
Paulson:
In terms
of getting the TARP,
there were three
or four sticking points,
but one that was very big
was compensation.
You know, Congress said,
if you're going to do
something for Wall Street,
they should be
willing to sacrifice.
The issue was,
are people gonna keep
their bonuses,
while we're bailing them out?
There had to be some
Old Testament justice
for the sins you committed
that we're all asked
to pay for.
Paulson:
When you go that way,
no bank will take capital
or take help from
the government,
unless they're ready to fail.
Emanuel:
They couldn't get
their head wrapped
around the idea,
there'd be some public say
in private sector pay.
"What do you mean you
would tell the private sector
who can get paid?"
And we looked at Hank
and Ben Bernanke like,
"What do you mean you
want $800 billion?"
"You know, we're not
the ones that said
"that Lehman
should go belly-up.
"When you needed that
$30 billion for Bear Stearns,
"you figured out where it was.
What do you mean you
want $800 billion?"
The pay was
an acknowledgment
that you had messed up.
Bolten:
Hank's first job
was to work out
a deal on
what the parameters
of the TARP legislation
would be
that we put on the floor.
Some time
well after midnight
in one of those sessions,
I recall receiving a call
from Leader Reid,
who said that
Hank had just thrown up into
a, uh, into a wastebasket.
Paulson:
I was in a little cubicle,
and I got the dry heaves.
And I make a lot of noise.
And so, Rahm Emanuel
immediately came in.
Emanuel:
He has, you know,
I wouldn't call it chest pains,
anyway, whatever.
I think it was, uh,
he had some breathing issues.
Senator Gregg
and I are with him.
Rahm and I didn't know
if this was real or not.
And I said or Rahm said,
"Well, let's get the doctor."
Hank Paulson said,
"No doctors! No doctors.
I know. I've been through
this before. It's okay."
Emanuel:
I looked at Gregg and I...
we both said the same
thing, which is,
this is never gonna
come out of the room
because if it ever
got to the market
that the secretary
of the Treasury... was--
I don't know if it was
a panic attack or whatever,
but it had, basically,
a challenge breathing.
The market
couldn't handle it,
psychologically.
So, it was a blood oath
between Senator Gregg and I.
I never told Nancy,
never told Steny,
never told anybody.
Gregg:
Rahm said, "We've gotta
solve this, quickly."
The implication being
if we didn't solve it,
we'd have the secretary
of the Treasury
maybe passing out
or something worse.
Paulson:
It was not a tactic,
but if it had been,
it was the best thing
that could've happened,
because it was
amazing how quickly
we got together
and had a deal.
Pelosi:
Good evening.
For the last several hours,
the chairs of our
committees have worked
with Secretary Paulson,
and others from
the administration
to resolve our differences,
so that we can go forward
with the package
to stabilize the markets,
most importantly,
to protect
the US taxpayers.
Pelosi:
We write the bill,
and we're bringing it
to the floor,
and we're coming up to the day
before the vote, and I said,
"I never lose a vote 'cause
I know-- I have my names.
I want to see your names."
The president said,
"They have to vote for it.
"Of course they'll vote for it.
This is an emergency.
They have to vote for it."
Ted Poe:
Small businesses,
mom-and-pop grocery stores
don't get this break
when they make bad
financial decisions.
They go out of business.
But the rich
and famous Wall Street,
New York City fat cats expect
Joe Six-Pack to buck it up,
and pay for
all this nonsense.
It's pretty clear
Republicans weren't for it.
I mean, there was
a lot of anger, and...
"I didn't come to Washington
to bail out Wall Street!"
You know, I didn't either,
but, you know, it's necessary.
Ben Hensarling:
Under this plan, ultimately
the federal government
will become the guarantor
of last resort,
and, Madam Speaker,
that does put us on
the slippery slope
to socialism.
Bernanke:
I remember talking to
Senator Kyl and asking him
how his constituent calls
were going on the TARP.
And he said,
"Well, it's about fifty-fifty.
Fifty percent no,
and fifty percent hell no."
If I didn't think
we were on the brink
of an economic disaster,
it would be the easiest thing
in the world for me
to say no to this.
John Boehner had warned me.
He had said, "Hank,
"when you're looking
at the House Republicans,
"you've got to remember
"one-third of them
are knuckle-draggers.
"Another third of them
"are in danger of losing
their seats at this election,
"and believe they're
likely to lose their seats,
"and don't wanna take
an unpopular vote.
So you're fishing
in a small pond."
Mike Pence:
Stand up for
the American taxpayer.
Reject this bailout
and vote no.
Michele Davis:
I went into Hank's
office and said, you know,
"Look, the Speaker brought
this up for a vote.
They wouldn't do that
if they didn't have
the votes to get it
over the top."
And so, we're watching it
and watching it
and watching it,
and nothing's moving,
and it's 212 to--
you know, just hovering.
Gregg:
It was a classic
political vote.
It was a bad vote
if you were a conservative.
It was a bad
if you were a liberal.
So the rank-and-file
members went in,
assuming that their leadership
had the votes to pass it.
They went in early,
and they voted no,
they left,
and they couldn't be found.
(gavel pounds)
House Member:
The yeas are 205.
The nays are 228.
The motion is not adopted.
Newsman:
The stock market
has moved lower.
The Dow Jones
Industrial Average
down almost 500 points.
Bernanke:
I was watching
the vote on television,
and watching, at the same time,
watching the stock market
falling and falling
and falling,
and saying to myself,
the whole US economy
is at risk,
and Congress
can't get it together
to take the necessary action
to help us stop this crisis.
I was very unhappy,
very disconsolate.
Newswoman:
We knew it was gonna
be a close vote,
but Wall Street is
extremely upset.
The Republicans
abandoned Bush.
I don't think Boehner
and Blunt knew
that they couldn't deliver.
But I do remember
walking over to 'em,
and putting my finger right
in John Boehner's chest.
I said,
you'd better fix this,
and you'd better
fix this fast.
I said this is your
problem, not ours.
We tried to help.
We need everybody
to calm down,
and relax,
and get back to work.
Newsman:
The primary issue
for the market
right now is fear.
Paulson:
I always thought
I planned for the worst,
but I just assumed with
all the leaders on board--
naive me,
I've been in Washington
for a couple years,
but I assumed
it would pass.
Part of that was also
every step of the way,
that we would have
half the votes,
and they would
have half the votes
because we believed that
this had to be bipartisan.
It was very,
very deflating.
Geithner:
I remember Hank
called me that night,
and his voice broke.
And he apologized to me,
for, you know, he owned
this sense of failure
'cause he was unsuccessful
that first vote.
And I remember saying to him,
I said, "Hank, you're...
"you'll get this passed,
you know.
We're the United States.
We'll figure out a way
through this."
Paulson:
We need to work as
quickly as possible.
We need to get
something done,
and I'm going to be
continuing to consult
with Congressional leaders,
to find a way forward
to get something done
as soon as possible.
We need to get
something done.
Newsman:
The Dow Jones Industrial
Average lost 777 points.
That is the biggest
point value loss ever.
Bush:
The first iteration
of TARP goes down,
and the market corrects
by $1.4 trillion,
which is kind of
the ultimate focus group.
Newsman:
Facing increasing pressure
from shaky markets,
Senate leaders pledge
to pick up the pieces
of the $700 billion
bailout.
Bush:
Josh and the team
came up with a different
strategy, and ran it up to
Congress again,
the Senate the first time.
Obama:
The time to act is now.
McCain:
If we fail to act,
the gears of our economy
will grind to a halt.
The Congress started
to hear from their--
from their constituents.
"What's happening to my 401K?
What's happening
to our economy?"
Then that lead to a reversal.
House Member:
The yeas are 74,
and the nays are 25.
The amendment is agreed to.
If the second vote
had gone down...
I might've found myself a cave
some place and hid for a while.
Emanuel:
We literally passed a bill
to send a signal
to the markets
and the financial world.
"Here's $800 billion.
We'll figure it out later."
Newswoman:
So, how did Wall Street
react to the big bailout?
The Dow actually closed
157 points lower.
Paulson:
So then,
while we were getting
this legislation in Congress,
the situation worsened.
We had the two biggest
bank failures in US history,
with Wachovia
and Washington Mutual,
WaMu.
Newsman:
In the last five days,
the Dow has fallen more
than 1,800 points and 18%,
the biggest weekly decline
in its entire
112-year history.
We needed something
that was going to work
much quicker
and be more powerful.
We had various
capital program ideas
to put capital
in the banks.
And we had our teams
working around the clock
figuring out
what would work.
So, as we were working this
through on Saturday night,
I was exhausted,
I fell sound asleep.
My phone rang
and I answered the phone,
and he said,
"Hank, this is Warren."
And... my mom has
a handyman named Warren.
I'm saying,
"Why is he calling me?"
But it was Warren Buffet.
He laid out the idea,
which was a germ
of what we did.
Buffett:
I made a suggestion around
the beginning of October
of a way to do it where
I thought the government
would come out
doing very well.
I actually thought
that it might
make more sense
to try and put,
just put more capital
into the banks
than it would to try
and buy these assets.
So, I actually sent
that along to Hank.
Bush:
Hank came to me and said,
"What we just
passed in Congress
isn't gonna work."
I said, "You gotta
be kidding me, man!"
(laughing)
"Now you tell me!"
His plan was now
to give the money
directly to Wall Street.
He said,
"It's the only shot we got."
I said,
"We're going for it."
Newswoman: Mr. Mack,
time for a comment?
Newswoman 2:
Will you tell us what
you'll be discussing today?
Newswoman:
Do you have some time
to chat with CNBC?
Newswoman 2:
You wanna tell us you're here
to meet with
the Treasury secretary?
Nope. Sorry.
(cameras clicking)
Newswoman:
Could you tell us what you'll
be discussing today, sir?
Sir, can you tell us
why you're here today?
-Can you tell us...
why you're here?
-Newswoman 2: Anything?
Geithner:
Columbus Day weekend,
after TARP had passed,
Hank convened the heads
of the major US banks
at the Treasury.
Dimon: I walk in
and there's, you know,
nine of us lined up there,
and on the other side,
there's Hank, Ben, Tim,
you know, a bunch
of other officials,
and they said they
have an idea.
They want us to take
this TARP money.
You know, "You're $25 billion,
you're 10 dol--"
On this basis, they calculated
roughly two percent,
I think, of risk-grade assets.
They also fully knew
that some people
did not need it,
and there were
a couple of people in
that room who needed it.
Goolsbee:
Nobody wants to publicly
take the money.
Because if
anybody takes it,
then the market says,
"Well, they must
be terrible!
Let's pull everything out!"
So, it actually was quite
an important decision
to twist arms and force
everybody to take it.
He was,
at the very top, he said,
"If you don't take it,
"and you need it later,
"it won't be
at six percent preferred.
You know, I'm gonna
take your firstborn."
And I fully understood.
Paulson:
I don't like to be
heavy-handed.
I abhorred
some of the things
I saw people
in government do
that I thought was abusive.
I really believed
we needed to do this
for the good of the system.
Mack:
He had this document,
and I said,
"Well, give it over here."
And I signed it,
and flipped it back
across the desk.
And Vikram said,
"Aren't you gonna
go to your board?"
I said, "No.
"When the secretary
of the Treasury tells me
"that if we don't do this
and we get in trouble,
I'll get punished,
that's all I need to know."
And I said,
"Look, if I get lucky,
my board will fire me.
I'll get out of
all this craziness."
(cameras clicking)
Newsman:
How'd the meeting go,
gentlemen?
Gentlemen?
Newswoman:
How was the meeting?
Did it work for you?
We're doing fine.
Assistant:
He can describe it
to you later, okay?
Newsman:
Try not to steal
any more money.
Dimon:
The press had been
all over the place.
The mistake we made
is in walking out.
When they tried to talk to us,
every one of us, you know,
brushed them off
a little bit.
Newswoman:
Did it go well?
Newsman:
How'd it work out
in there, man?
Dimon:
And so the headline
the next day said,
not only were
they bailed out,
they were ungrateful.
Protesters (chanting):
Not bailout! No bailout!
Trust your banker.
Give us your blank check.
Man:
I'm here to oppose
the bailout plan
because it's a massive
transfer of wealth
from working Americans
to elite institutions
and the super wealthy.
Give us
for your firstborn
and your
blank checks!
Bush:
Hank called, and said,
"I got 'em to take
all the money.
"Plus, I've got
700 other banks
around the country."
So, probably the greatest
financial bailout ever.
The intervention, I think,
saved a depression,
but I can't prove it.
I mean, I can talk
till I'm blue in the face
at the Rotary Clubs
in the heartland
of America and say,
"Man, we stopped
a depression."
And they'll look at me
and say,
"No, you spent our money
to bail out Wall Street."
How many times
will we have to dig
in our pockets?
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac!
Protesters:
Give us our houses back!
Bernanke:
I think there's still many
people who believe that
we bailed out companies
and helped Wall Street
because we were
trying to help
our friends in
the financial industry,
and not out of
our interest in defending
the US economy.
That's absolutely
not true, but,
you know, I think
I have to live with that.
Protesters:
Bailout over my dead body.
Bailout over my dead body.
Security: Okay,
if y'all do not get up...
Geithner: I met
the then-Democratic
nominee Obama
in New York,
in late October,
maybe a week or two
after the TARP thing,
and I remember
saying to him,
you know, we'd broken
the back of the panic,
but it wasn't over yet.
It's gonna take
a bunch more stuff still.
Newsman:
Barack Obama will become
the 44th President
of the United States.
(cheering)
It's been a long time coming.
But tonight,
because of what
we did on this day,
change has come to America.
(cheering)
Let us remember that
if this financial crisis
taught us anything,
it's that we cannot have
a thriving Wall Street,
while Main Street suffers.
Obama:
A fever plateaus,
but it doesn't break.
We didn't know how fast
the economy was contracting.
The foreclosure rate is
skyrocketing and there's
no end in sight,
so we're going
to have to have
a housing strategy.
Obama:
For even as
we celebrate tonight,
we know the challenges
that tomorrow will bring
are the greatest
of our lifetime.
Obama:
We've got at least
five institutions
that are bombs,
ready to go off
at any time.
(cheering)
Welcome to the White House.
I had been talking
to Barack Obama
on a daily basis,
and the TARP had
become stigmatized.
My credibility
was going fast.
You seem to be flying
a $700 billion plane
by the seat of your pants.
Paulson:
I was looking forward
to after the election
to hearing from him,
and getting support
and backing and so on.
And instead, I heard
from one of his,
uh, transition
team members.
"Guess what,
Mr. Treasury Secretary,
you've had your
last conversation
with the president."
Newsman:
More big-name companies
made plans
to shed workers.
The bank that got billions in
free money from the taxpayers
then turns around,
cuts off credit
to a local business,
and then won't authorize
workers to get a penny
upon leaving,
with three days' notice.
We're outraged.
The nine weeks
between the time that
Barack Obama was
elected president
and when he was sworn in,
it was holy hell.
Newsman:
Circuit City will
go out of business,
cutting 30,000 jobs.
Newswoman:
The nation's
unemployment rate
bolted to a 14-year high.
Geithner:
We did slow the panic,
or stop the panic,
but the system was very
broken at that point.
Completely frozen.
Newswoman:
Automakers are back
on Capitol Hill today,
seeking a
$34 billion bailout.
Paulson:
What was
looking at the deed
to keep the auto
industry from imploding.
Man:
We pray that you
would remove the veil
between the people
of this nation
and the people
in authority.
Paulson:
But Barack Obama had
the political courage
to do what was right,
and do what the public
didn't wanna hear.
All the money came back,
and came back with
a $50 billion profit,
the money they put
in the banks and the
insurance companies.
So, when you look at how
the US economy recovered,
you know,
growing at two percent
for the third-quarter
of 2009 on,
our system
worked really well.
So, the TARP
capital program is
the most successful program
that is broadly hated
in the history of mankind.
Bernanke:
We had a dinner at
the Federal Reserve
for, you know,
to say goodbye to Hank.
It had been a really
tough time for him,
and I'm sure
he was relieved
that he no longer would
have the responsibility.
But we knew that we
could still count on him,
and that we could
call him and talk to him.
Paulson:
As stressful as
working for 18 months
during the crisis,
the first year I was
out of government
was the hardest period,
by far, for me.
I sort of sat on the sidelines
with my heart in my throat,
but I look at it
now and I say, "Wow."
You know, policy continuity.
(applause)
Geithner:
President Obama,
we first met
in late October,
and he, at the end
of our meeting,
he said,
"I might need to ask you
to come work with me
in Washington."
And I was deeply
reluctant to do it.
He encouraged me
not to do it.
He said, "Mr. President,
you don't want
to bring me on.
"I've been on the front lines
on this thing.
Maybe what you need is
a clean break."
But I trusted Tim
as someone who was
a technician,
who was not ideological.
-He was my best bet.
-Good morning.
Geithner:
You know, ultimately,
if the president asks you
to serve your country,
and you believe in
him or her,
it's a hard thing not to do.
Today,
Vice President-Elect Biden
and I are pleased to
announce the nomination
of Timothy Geithner
as Secretary of Treasury.
We did a whole
range of things
to keep the mortgage
markets open,
lower interest rates,
help people refinance,
help people
stay in their home.
Newswoman:
President Barack Obama is
rolling out the next step
in his multi-pronged plan
to revive the US economy.
A $75 billion program to
help struggling homeowners.
But if you remember
the public debate,
there was a huge opposition to
bailing out the homeowner too.
Santelli:
This is America!
How many of you people
wanna pay for your
neighbor's mortgage,
that has an extra bathroom,
and can't pay their bills?
-Raise their hand.
-(booing)
President Obama,
are you listening?
There was a famous
rant by Rick Santelli,
which a lot of people
view as the, you know,
beginning expression of
what became the Tea Party.
Protesters:
You work for us!
You work for us!
Palin:
Let's stand together,
let's stand with honor.
Let's restore America!
(cheering)
Goolsbee:
The Tea Party begins
with the announcement
of the housing program.
And they say,
"This is all for deadbeats
"and rewarding people
who don't deserve it!
We should form
the Tea Party."
Protesters:
You work for us!
You work for us!
Obama:
I was not surprised
by the public backlash.
Because a year after,
we've spent
a trillion-plus dollars,
people are still
going to feel worse.
And all they see is
that there's a whole
bunch of money
going to the folks
who perpetrated some
of these terrible things.
Bernanke:
Financial crises
are often followed
by populist reaction,
but I think it's important
to understand though that
there's some very long-term
trends in the United States,
including
the stagnation of wages,
the reduction in
upward mobility for people,
lack of opportunity.
There's a whole
number of things
which have contributed
to the present moment.
The financial crisis
didn't help that,
but it obviously
exacerbated some underlying
tensions in
the United States.
Newswoman:
Two of AIG's former CEOs
were grilled
about a retreat,
where only a week
after being bailed out
by taxpayers,
its executives
spent $440,000
on oceanfront rooms,
rounds of golf,
and trips to
the resort spa and salon.
Elijah Cummings:
They were getting
their manicures,
their facials, their pedicures,
and their massages,
while American people
were footing the bill.
Bernanke:
One of the worst days
I had came when
we learned that AIG was
contractually obligated
to pay bonuses
to some of the people
in the-- in the financial
products division.
And I knew that
was a catastrophe,
and there was gonna be
a huge problem politically.
Don Manzullo:
The American people
had to bailout AIG,
but most Americans still lost
40 to 50% of their
retirement plans.
If we'd not made that action,
they would've lost 70%.
Geithner:
I think it was clear
it was gonna be fraught.
At the core of
the challenge was, again,
is this basic thing about
fairness and morality.
How do you
figure out a way
to protect
the public interest
without creating a whole bunch
of private beneficiaries?
Did the people
who took out insurance
with AIG
to insure their
retirement plans
get reimbursed 100%,
so they suffered
very little loss?
Yes or no?
Not one of you three can
give me a yes on that answer!
-Or no!
-Bernanke: Because it's a--
it's a poorly
posed question.
The fact that the American
public hates what we did
is-- is not surprising
because, in many ways,
it's un-American.
Protesters:
Occupy Wall Street all day!
Newsman:
Several hundred
people packed
into Bowling Green Park
in Lower Manhattan,
for what they're calling
an Occupy Wall Street
demonstration.
People are definitely getting
screwed over right now,
getting hurt by a lot
of the powers that be,
and we wanna see it
change in that.
Emanuel:
People struggling to
pay their mortgages.
Incomes that haven't gone up,
all this strain,
and people
at the very top
walking off...
Protester:
You should go to jail!
...acting like their
shit doesn't stink.
Henry Waxman:
Since 2000,
you've taken home more
than $480 million.
Are these figures
basically accurate?
I would assume they are.
Emanuel:
In that whole attitude,
is that people think that
there are two rule books.
One for the elite,
and one for everybody else.
And that started off
a populist revolt.
Announcer:
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome the President
of the United States,
Mr. Donald J. Trump!
(cheering)
Steve Bannon:
The fuse was lit in 2008,
and Donald Trump
was the explosion.
He's the result of
the financial crisis.
Trump:
There's a lot of
Washington lobbyists,
bureaucrats, politicians,
who don't want to see
things change.
That's because everybody's
making a fortune,
and people outside
of that area,
are paying for the money
they're making.
We're not gonna have it.
(cheering)
Obama:
The crisis awakens people
to that sense that
the game is rigged,
this economy is not
working for me.
Trump:
This is a sick system
from the inside.
We have a lot of sickness
in some of our institutions.
(cheering)
And in that
kind of environment,
if you've got
irresponsible politicians
who want to take advantage that
and start scapegoating
people who don't look like you,
or start trafficking
in conspiracy theories,
yeah, there's going
to be more of
an audience for that.
Protesters:
Build that wall!
And it tests our democracy
in ways that, um...
are troubling.
We're going to take care
of this country
for our children
and our grandchildren
and our great-grandchildren,
and we're not gonna let people
come into our country
who are gonna
destroy our country.
(cheering)
Crises breed populism.
And, yes,
economics go along
with politics.
And if one is broken,
the other gets...
it gets broken.
And it's going to take
very strong leadership
to bring this country together
because we're very polarized.
Crowd:
USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA! USA!
(indistinct chatter)
Paulson:
Those of you who know me,
you don't have to worry.
I'm not gonna read
a prepared speech.
-I...
-(laughter)
It's funny,
but not that funny, right?
(laughter)
Paulson:
I think perhaps because
we were so different
in our own ways,
we had different
skill sets,
we had different
personalities,
we had different
experiences,
but we trusted
each other, and so I,
you know, to me,
I look back
and I don't know
how we would ever
got through it,
if I hadn't-- if I hadn't
had these guys
as-- as partners.
Geithner:
I remember looking at my
wife's face in the morning
when she'd read about
something we'd done...
(chuckling)
...and like watching how
I could not convince her...
(laughter)
...that really that was
as best we could do.
(laughter)
That was the best
we could do.
We designed
a strategy that was
effective in getting
the economy
growing, and quickly,
and people thought we gave
hundreds of billions of
dollars away to the banks,
which they paid themselves
in compensation,
and the country lost
those resources.
But in effect,
we designed a strategy
where we forced them
to pay for that,
and the taxpayer earned
a significant direct profit.
But I don't think
that's enough for people.
Bernanke:
At one point,
Michelle Smith
came to me, said,
"You need to have a town
hall with the staff.
"People are coming up to them
in the grocery stores saying,
'What the hell are you doing?'"
Bernanke:
I guess the thing
that makes me
a little optimistic
is that...
we've shown in the past that
when there's a real threat,
whether it's a 9/11
or a financial crisis,
or a war,
or whatever it might be,
that we can come together,
and I think we will,
if that--
if that does happen.
Geithner:
And remember
we were lucky, too.
You know, we had financial
resources large enough
to really do anything.
Not many countries
have that privilege.
And it's really fun
to see you all again,
although it's kind of
painful too.
(applause, laughter)