Tuesday, April 1, 2008

"I'm Glad I Got Out When I Did"

Great interview with former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil. Some highlights:
It’s so hard to understand how the subprime mortgage crisis has triggered a financial crisis of global proportions. If you have 10 bottles of water, and one bottle had poison in it, and you didn’t know which one, you probably wouldn’t drink out of any of the 10 bottles; that’s basically what we’ve got there.
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McCain recently confessed in public that his grasp of economics is limited. Yeah. That’s a great place to start from, isn’t it?
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Have you seen Dick Cheney since he fired you? I have been to a few events where the vice president was there, but we both did our best to ignore each other. You know, I was a pallbearer, and he was a pallbearer, too.

You mean at President Ford’s funeral? Yes.

And you didn’t say hello? Nope. It was a good time to be alone together.

Are you ever confused with former Yankee outfielder Paul O’Neill? I once gave a speech in New York when I said that whenever I called up a four-star restaurant for a table, they’d fall all over themselves. Then they’d say, “Will Mr. Jeter be coming with you?”

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Do you feel bitter about your service for the Bush administration? No. I’m thankful I got fired when I did, so that I didn’t have to be associated with what they subsequently did.

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