Paulson: More crises to come

By Andrea Drusch, Politico, September 16, 2013.

On the five-year anniversary of the U.S. financial meltdown, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said on Sunday the country can count on more financial crises to come, but hopefully none the size of 2008’s.

The economy is "much better off than it was,” he said of the progress made in the past five years. “We avoided a very bad fate, things could have been as bad as the Great Depression.”

Joined by former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Paulson painted a positive picture for the future of the U.S. economy.

“Today the economy is growing at 2 percent, although that’s not enough, it’s something we can take satisfaction in given the amount of leveraging that needed to be done,” he said.

Of the work still to be done, Paulson listed tax reform and fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Frank, co-author of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act, told host David Gregory that he believed the crisis five years ago could not happen again today in the same way. He blamed the 2008 meltdown on bad mortgages, and said that that problem had been resolved.

“There are some large institutions that are too big to fail without taking account for the consequences,” Frank said. “But what we have now is the power in federal officials to step in and put those institutions out of business.”