Former Treasury Secretary Paulson: Be ready to change course

(Original source Bloomberg) 

“Henry Paulson turned down one of the highest posts in the U.S. government — Secretary of the Treasury — three times before he realized what was holding him back. “I just realized that it was fear of failure,” he said during a recent discussion with Stanford Graduate School of Business students. “And as soon as I realized that, I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to give into that,’ and I accepted.”

It turned out there was something to be afraid of: Two years after he was confirmed by the Senate, the mortgage market imploded and threatened to take down the rest of the banking system. Paulson played a key role in engineering the controversial bailout of investment bank and brokerage firm Bear Stearns and government loan institutions Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly known as TARP.”

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