but do you think hank paulson, tim geithner did the right thing? i say yes.use at that moment in time we needed intervention. is that where you are? >> yes. i absolutely agree that at that point in time, we needed to somehow bring liquidity back into the system. >> i mean, if people are starving, you don't say, sorry, you're on your own. you give them food. >> i think one of the big debates is -- is the perception of wall street, what was done after the public helped us out. i think that's what troubles a lot of people. >> robert, great to have you on the program. >> fantastic. i can't wait to read the book. i love the cover. >> thank you. you were great to talk to me in the book. thank you, robert. >> you're welcome. >>> up next on the "wall street journal report," a look at the news this week that will have an impact on your money. >>> and a lost viking artifact rediscovered. >>> for more on our show and your guests, check out wsjr.cnbc.com. you'll also find a link to my blog. >>> now a look that stories coming up that may move the markets and impact your m

will bail it out just like hank paulson back in october of two thousand and eight but a gun the congressman said and said if you don't give us seven hundred billion dollars so we can give our banking relations in europe the american taxpayer money we're going to declare martial law and shut down the american economy so says testimony from congressman who were there at the time they were threatened with martial law from hank paulson former c.e.o. of goldman sachs so again let me repeat myself up there and say around if you want to protect yourself from rogue grown bombers and other flights of fancy from large ships patrolling in the area with bombers and marines and whatnot you must start getting yourself more indebted to wall street this is the only way consider yourself well tony blair does work at j.p. morgan he might have a loan for that also money up right now tony's hot shop tony's debt shop so tony an attorney is to read calling it is hard to live in does my old boy old sports. thanks so much for being on the kaiser report stacy herbert thank you max when we come back we're going to c

i know you have had hank paulson on this broadcast. but he was literally vomiting. there were moments where he was physically vomiting because of his anxiety, his sleeplessness about what was happening during this period. it was, i will truly never forget it. and i hope that the viewers and the public don't either. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: great having you, in paperback now, "too big to fail" the inside story about wall street and how washington fought to save the financial system and themselves. it's been revised. >> i have added an afterword and a number of new scenes. >> rose: winner of the 2010 award for best business book. one of the financial times best books of 2010. one of "business week"'s best books 2010. it goes on and on and on. tremendous reporting. your writing for tuesday's paper on. >> olver stone, my columning tie olver stone to lunch at the four seasons. he has a new movie coming out wall street 2, and we had a fascinating lunch given that so many of wall street's real life characters were in the room. >>

." >> do you have any regrets today between you fed chair bernanke and then hank paulson didn't figureut a way to save lehman brothers? >> that would have been the right thing to do if we had any capacity to do it. >> that seemed to be a change from the time -- the government, or however you want to describe that what were trying to save wall street. there really is regret now that they let lehman fail, isn't there? >> i don't think people recognized the implications of letting lehman go and the severity of that. and it wasn't necessarily too big to fail as much as it was too connected to fail. and that is also the issue with aig. look, you know, i think at the end of the day, it's true, they did not have the authority. and i think the reason they say -- and this is what i write about in the book -- they had a big money player jpmorgan who was willing to come in and acquire the assets. >> like a t.a.r.p. essentially. >> yes. here they didn't have the resolution authority, which is why that ended up being item number two in the financial regulatory reform. but, you know, wall street did

though interestingly, hank paulson, the bush treasury secretary when he recommended financial regulation a couple years ago had a consumer protection component to it as well. elizabeth warren has been a consumer advocate for years as a college professor and someone who has spoken out and been on the congressional oversight panel for the tarp program, trying to see how that's been administered. and she's somebody who is going to stand up that agency. they face a huge fight. republicans are fighting the administration across the board on major and controversial appointments of this kind so the administration's choice is do we go ahead and have that fight, might have political benefit in the election, or do we get the agency going and tell our base we've won by going around the senate and doing it? that's what they did. gwen: it felt to me like for both parties this was a week which crystalized something interesting, which is they're all runninging a fast as they can to catch up with the oncoming train before it rolls them over but neither party mainstreams or figures out how to do it. >> i

so the authorities blew it up i thought that's a great way this is exactly what ben bernanke or hank paulson. bush obama all these people should have done it was so expensive to fix this corrupt banking and financial system they should have just blown the whole thing up well i mean that's what a lot of people proposed another words put all those bad banks ringfence them essentially nationalize them which is the same thing as blowing it all up and then start a few new banks that are clean of any of these toxic debts and hire managers who are not tied in with robert rubin larry summers tim geithner and anybody who has been responsible for corrupting and destroying the u.s. banking system the global banking system for the past twenty years i mean that's a. they could obama could have done that that was an option that he had but because he's got larry summers and tim geithner whispering and duis there he did the absolute worst thing speaking of funny dried beef sort of moments here's another dried beef moment e.u. set secret group to save the euro. two months after the collapse of lehman brother

away with destroying our banking system you're going to jail so the same with bush the same with hank paulson all the people that aided and abetted the criminals in america timothy geithner and larry summers all of these people should be potentially facing their own investigations oh absolutely summers and geithner certainly they were carried over from the bush administration barack obama gave those those cancerous lecherous kleptocrats oxygen to keep breathing to keep breeding to keep performing mellow and actions against the economy against the folks in america and as a result obama's a one term president i make that prediction right here now the one thing that is not being spoken about in america is all so you have all of these poor people you are not allowed to help them however the one thing that you can always keep on spending on is the warfare state defense cuts threat to special relationship apparently inflicting deep cuts on the armed services could threaten the special relationship between britain and the us this is president barack obama's defense department has issued warnings to

vatican said that it was perplexed and surprised by the investigation which is a classic that's like hank paulson as the markets collapse he who engineered much of the c.d.o. collapse and subprime mortgage fraud saying he was perplexed and surprised and had no idea what was going on lloyd blankfein the pope monger and buffett should start a new edge fun and call dimentia incorporated and they only invest in companies to benefit from this rise in dimension which would include of course wal-mart the leaders of which believe that by having people lined up a midnight for baby formula and some new reservation constructed prison casino golaghat is a worthwhile business model as buffett who's an adoring us money laundering drug traffic supporter monger who is the richest floor sweeper in american history and lloyd blankfein who hears voices down there goldman sachs is doing god's work doing the work of schmucks so we have this building of this sort of. monarchy in america where these people are just openly taunting the peasant population saying let them eat cake we deserve all of this divine bounty beca

stimulus program on top of the seven hundred fifty billion or so bailout of wall street banks that hank paulson got congress to agree to back in the two thousand and eight period and people are saying well ok this is going to offset this black hole in the economy at that time however what was not fully disclosed was there was another five to ten to fifteen trillion at least in additional blackhole debt obligations or claims that had not worked their way through the economy today there's no inflation because there's another fifteen to twenty twenty trillion of black that hole still to be worked through how why is it . smith that the government can't get wall street or any bank in the world to tell them honestly what their true liabilities are one of the worst is that you've got a lot of double counting mean it's this is a good defense but unfortunately because so many of these markets were unregulated there never was any central reporting and therefore you've got exposures that go across firms you know double malt you know two times three times four times you might have the same you know credit

>> well, it was the hank paulson and george bush wing of the republican party, the very wing that's ling right now, by the way. >> mr. watts, we have to go. i'm sorry, sir. please come back. congressman j.c. watts, he mentioned his home state again and again. thank you for joining us. when we return let me finish with some thoughts about -- i think you're going to like what i have to say about public schools. we invented them in this country. now we have to fix them. >>> let me finish tonight with how america became a great country this past century. we did it because we took everyone at a young age and educated them. we created something called public school. they had thog like it in the country so many of our families came from. had nothing like it here before. it was the basis of a true democracy where everyone gets a chance to learn, to grow, to become a full share in the accumulated knowledge of mankind. well, we have a problem today. washington, the city where the congress meets, where the federal government is set, now produces young people who are not able to compete in our socie

>> it was the hank paulson and george bush wing of the republican party, the very wing that's losingthat's the fight that's on right now. mr. watts, we have to go. i'm sorry, sir. please come back. j.c. watts, mentioned his home state again and again. brendan steinhauser. >>> i think what you're going to like what i have to say about public schools. we invented them in this country. now we have to fix them. [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium rich tums goes to work in seconds. nothing works faster. ♪ tum ta tum tum tums i've been looking at the numbers, and i think our campus is spending too much money on printing. i'd like to put you in charge of cutting costs. calm down. i know that it is not your job. what i'm saying... excuse me? alright, fine. no, you don't have to do it. ok? [ male announcer ] notre dame knows it's better for xerox to control its printing costs. so they can focus on winning on and off the field. [ manager ] are you sure i can't talk -- ok, no, i get it. [ male announcer ] with xerox, you're ready for real busi

government used itted it to save a handful of reputations, specifically larry summers, alan greenspan, hank paulson, bob bernanke and paul ruben. it is important to make sure the tax pairs spend money to make sure they don't look bad in public because they are the ones created the system that destroyed our country and important they control the government so they can make sure they cover up the destruction as they extract the money. it is going to cost $4 trillion what can we do? as a result, we have watched foreign direct investment over the past two years in this country plummet to the lowest level it has been ever, at least since world war ii. unemployment continues to rise and lending has gone away. let's see, we have got reputational saving. we have got few hundred billion in bonuses. and we have got a completely deprived country of any basic sense of fairness or natural course of business where things fail and things are created because the old businesses control the government because, well, they can. joining us now, mark inge, founder, editor of exile online. if you look at the facts here,

>> well, it was the hank paulson and george bush wing of the republican party, the very wing that's losingr. watts, we have to go. i'm sorry, sir. please come back. congressman j.c. watts, he mentioned his home state again and again. thank you for joining us. when we return let me finish with some thoughts about -- i think you're going to like what i have to say about public schools. we invented them in this country. now we have to fix them. [ advisor 1 ] what do you see yourself doing one week, one month, five years after you do retire? ♪ client comes in and they have a box. and inside that box is their financial life. people wake up and realize i better start doing something. we open up that box. we organize it. and we make decisions. we really are here to help you. they look back and think, "wow. i never thought i could do this." but we've actually done it. [ male announcer ] visit ameriprise.com and put a confident retirement more within reach. lord of the carry-on. sovereign of the security line. you never take an upgrade for granted. and you rent from national. because only national

do you have any regrets today that between you, fed chair bernanke, and then treasury secretary hank paulson the three of you didn't figure out a way for the government to save lehman brothers? >> we would have done it if we had any capacity to do that, absolutely. that would have been the right thing to do. but the tragic failure of this crisis was that we did not have the tools to limit leverage, limit risk taking in some of the largest financial institutions in the country. and when they made a bunch of tragic mistakes, we didn't have the capacity to wind them down, break them up without huge damage to the rest of the american economy. those were the basic failures of policy that helped lead to the crisis, and that's what the bill corrects. >> well, i want to move on to an issue that's current today, and that is, of course, the tax cuts, and whether to let the tax cuts expire for the wealthiest of americans. my question to you is, we all know the president's position, your position that the bush tax cuts for the wealthiest should be allowed to expire. there are a lot of people who say, lo

it would have been better had and bernanke and hank paulson not done that. we and the federal reserve will loan you the money that you were going to get from aig, but in return we will what warrants and an ownership share in your company as well. that would have been much better way of dealing with the situation. then again, the only have 48 hours between the moment that aig announced the trouble it was in, because nobody had seen this coming, and when they had to act. here is something where i think the wrong decision was made, but time pressure was so intense and the situation was so uncertain and bernanke and hank paulson had do something that i am not inclined to blame them for getting that one wrong. host: k. bradford del

that's not true. >> you believe hank paulson allowed them to pass tarp. >> they flat lined.ded to bail out a bunch of banks at once. they put a bullet right in the forehead, execution, they did it to scare congress and two weeks later the dow dropped 2,000 points and that tarp is passed. >> you were staring at this right before the segment. you talked about where the dow was and where it is now. you can't say i despise the bailouts but i despise the fact that lehman failed. we have both examples, both basically bad. >> i'm a lifelong republican, i despise bailouts. but it makes no sense to let lehman fail and bail out everyone afterwards because the lehman failure made the aig bailout double, maybe five times more expensive and made the g.m. and chrysler bailouts much more expensive. it was like schizophrenia. >> it's so complex, your book really reads where i can understand it as a noneconomist wall street guy, still putting the pieces back together. bottom problem, people still don't have jobs. are you okay. >> i'm fine. but a lot of us are hurt by this bank failing. >> a

the programs they protested against started in the closing years of the bush administration when hank paulson was trying to keep the economy from going over the cliff. take health care, for example, 17 1/2% of our gdp. no question about it, this health care bill is problematic for a lot of people. what are the answers? not just repealing it. the games are well under way. i've been doing this for a long time, meredith and never seen so many plates moving at the same time without having a key sense where they would end up. >> have you seen anything like the tea party? >> no, i haven't. you think about it, nine, 12 months ago we didn't know about the tea party. the power of the internet cannot be overstated. the first rule of politics is don't let the opposition define you. the tea party is using the internet, their people are motivated, passionate, turning out. >> about obama. >> guess who used the same technique to get elected president of the united states, president obama. and finds himself where bill clinton is saying he has to start pushing back than he has so far. >> this is a very right