Paulson Justifies Steps Taken to Tackle Foreclosure Crisis
Previous Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has justified the steps he had taken during his tenure to tackle the foreclosure crisis. He admitted that although the response of the Bush government to the crisis was not perfect it had “saved this nation from great peril.” He said recently in a written statement prior to a hearing, “Many more Americans would be without their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their savings and their way of life.” The losses were enormous but that pain would have been much greater and acute if the government had not stepped in, was his view. He would be placing his views before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Paulson’s statements came in the wake of an independent bipartisan investigation being initiated by the handling of the catastrophe by the government. The effort has been given the lead by Phil Angelides (Democrat) and Bill Thomas (Republican). $5 million has been earmarked for the commission to complete the investigation by 15th December 2010.
Angelides had unsuccessfully faced Arnold Schwarzenegger for the post of the governor of California. He said that the target was to conduct a scrupulous nonpartisan investigation. Speaking in an interview he said, “Our job is to do the best possible job of shining the light of day on what really happened so it’s less likely to happen in the future.”
Both the Congress and the White House are mulling over the next step the government should take to address the grave economic crisis – the worst in decades. This is against the background of increasing foreclosures and surging unemployment that is expected to touch 10% this current year.
One suggestion that came forth from government officials was to permit those facing foreclosure to continue to stay in the mortgaged house as tenants but hand over the ownership to the lenders. The Democrats, who had not been told about this plan said despite being skeptical about the measure, they would keep their minds open.
Senator Christopher Dodd (Democrat), chairperson of the Banking Committee said, “I don’t know if this is the right idea or not, but given the scope of the crisis – more than 10,000 Americans found themselves in foreclosure last month – we should consider any option that might help keep people in their homes.”
Already the approval has been given by the Congress to a bail out amount of $700 million to help the financial houses that had fallen. This was during the tenure of Paulson. In February under President Obama another $787 billion stimulus package has been released in February.