the collapse of washington mutual, congressional passage of the power to henry paulson, plus pork plan. a sharp drop in the dow jones average, the federal reserve board unprecedented decision to lend directly to nonfinancial companies. the government partial nationalization of major banks. paulson's announcement that he would use his bailout money for something other than what he told congress it would be for. the automobile bailout and interactive client of a congressional vote and so on and on. and one of the problems, especially for think tank in washington, was that there was no time to fight any of these measures. most of them were just aounced as done deals. every monday morning, the secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the federal rerve would hold a press conference to announce what they had nationalize over the weekend. there was no debate. there was no time to argue about it i no time to challenge it or analyze it with the incumbent president in charge, both presidential candidates going alone, most members of congress afraid to challenge these are dire warnings of ca

you have key player -- ben bernanke, henry paulson, tim geithner. personalities come into play. a sense of -- not certainty about exactly what to o. >> that's absolutely rht, so during that lehman weekd in eptember 08, bernanke, who is the economist, economi historian from princeton whoas very little experience in e marke and very little experience government stays behind in washington. tim geithner,resident of the fedel reserve bank in new york, an accomplished behind-e-scenes thnocrat who has lived thugh a lotof crises before and kind of has maybe a bit of hubris or arrogce in that he's never fixed a cisis he coun't fix, fix today's problem and worry about tomorrow's torrow -- and en you have hank paulson, this former dartmouth ftball player whichomes up in every profile of him because he feels like a football player, very restless, done 100 dels on wall street, very patient, very 2k3w6, gives orrs, expects people -- very gruff, gives people oders and expec them tocomply, sees hielf as the superior of all the c.e.o.'s, they come to tis ekend hoping toell lehman brothers to ari

is henry paulson the most maligned guy, maybe the recapitalization of the banks is being ahead and is helping. >> i think so. history will look kindly on what hank paulson did. my response to dr. reich, would you rather had goldman sachs or some other bank go out of business. we saw what happened with lehman brothers. that wasn't a solution, that wasn't something that made things better. the t.a.r.p. did make things better. i agree a financial recovery is not a recovery but there is no full recovery without a strong financial sector. tony, i agree with that. wall street is not turning around and lending a lot to main street. we're not seeing the financial sector of this doing xhat we set out to do by lending taxpayers all that money. what larry and i agreed on, you either should have a massive chapter 11 bankruptcy type proceeding for wall street or else have a temporary receivership. the t.a.r.p. bailout that had no effect on main street at all, no positive effect was throwing bad money after bad money. >> no. it's a result -- the impact would have been in the absence. had these bank

and we forget that it was henry paulson who actually was responsible for the very dramatic legislation. wall street affects main street. hank paulson, with the fed went through a lot of legislation. and i hope his memoirs get painted differently. >> yeah, he really has. he is a guy that came out of retirement. i am sure he wishes he just would have gone to aspen. >> i think he is a better guy than that. actually, i don't think he would. i think he wanted to help the country. it's a conspiracy theory. >> thank you. the great taste of splenda® no calorie sweetener and added a little fiber? sweet! sweet! (together) sweet! (announcer) now for the first time, a gram of healthy fiber in every packet. sweet! (announcer) splenda® with fiber. ♪ wl i was shopping for ♪ which one's me - a cool convertible or an suv? ♪ sweet! ♪ too bad i didn't know my credit was whack ♪ ♪ 'cause now i'm driving off the lot in a used sub-compact. ♪ ♪ f-r-e-e, that spells free credit report dot com, baby. ♪ ♪ saw their ads on my tv ♪ thought about going but was too lazy ♪ ♪ now instead of looking fly and rollin' ph

documents prepared for that meeting in washington last year when the big banks were summoned with henry paulsonp saying, here, sign the permission slip. you are taking it no matter what and people hated the banks for taking the money. some of them very very happy to give it back. small banks have paid back about $35 million. not quite as much but there's money going back. i want to be clear here. the banking system -- we have issues. taking over banks every week now but there's money coming back to treasury. >> good thing. >> keep it coming. it is our money. >> thanks. >> sure. >>> coming up, we remember prepping for the a.t.c.s, stressing out. number two pencils breaking right and left. maybe now it's optional for kids. "traiting america." are working from the road using a mifi-- a mobile hotspot that provides up to five shared wi-fi connections. two are downloading the final final revised final presentation. - one just got an email. - woman: what?! hmph. it's being revised again. the copilot is on mapquest. and tom is streaming meeting psych-up music - from meltedmetal.com. - ( heavy metal mu

as former treasury secretary henry paulson has observed, and we need to use, while fannie mae and freddiend to decide what role they should play in the markets. i must, however, caution everyone that this debate will be a long distance relay between congresses, not a 100-meter sprint within the 111th congress. this debate, over what roles and functions fannie mae and 3 should perform has, of course, raged for many years did many good reform ideas have started to come to light in recent months and we should study them closely. some of our choices include reconstituting the enterprises they were before the conservatorship decision, splitting them into smaller operating companies like we did with at&t, regulating prices they charge like a utility, creating core operative, non-pictures or resolving them back into the government. many have also called for privatizing fannie mae and freddie mac, and there are some precedent for some actions. in the 1990s, for example, we enacted a law that allowed sallie mae to graduate from the school of government-sponsored enterprise. what we could do the sa