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Pelosi on Wall Street: We Need Confidence
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09/18/08 08:29 AM ET
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that President Bush isn't doing enough to provide Wall Street, struggling with investment banks failures, with the confidence it needs.
"What we really need now is confidence, and confidence is hard to come by at a time when there's so much bad news emerging from our financial markets," Pelosi said at a news ocnference Thursday. "What we have now is a man-made disaster, a disaster that sprang -- comes from the Bush failed policies, the failure of the Bush administrations to steward our economy in a responsible way."
She noted the brevity of Bush's statement Thursday, which she said did little to explain the situation to Americans and allay their economic fears.
"We wondered if he was ever going to come out of hiding on this subject," Pelosi said. "He came out in one minute and said very little."
Pelosi also said that GOP presidential nominee John McCain, like Bush, lacks credibility when it comes to talking about the economy. McCain has talked about more regulation of the finance sector, even though he boasted about supporting deregulation in the past, Pelosi noted.
"How else could John McCain, in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, tell the American people the fundamentals of our economy are strong?" she said.
Pelosi pushed back against suggestions that Conrgress wouldn't do anything about the crisis until next year. She said that House committees would begin hearings on the bailout decisions made by Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and on the impact of the $85 billion federal rescue loan to insurance giant AIG .
Pelosi also wondered where that money will come from and asked whether other countries, whose companies also do business with the insurance firm, could help pay for the loan.
"One of the reasons why they had to bail out AIG was because of foreign banks, and both Europe and Asia were saying that they had such a stake in AIG in their own countries. Well, where are they?," she said. "Why are they not participating in this bailout?"
"What we really need now is confidence, and confidence is hard to come by at a time when there's so much bad news emerging from our financial markets," Pelosi said at a news ocnference Thursday. "What we have now is a man-made disaster, a disaster that sprang -- comes from the Bush failed policies, the failure of the Bush administrations to steward our economy in a responsible way."
She noted the brevity of Bush's statement Thursday, which she said did little to explain the situation to Americans and allay their economic fears.
"We wondered if he was ever going to come out of hiding on this subject," Pelosi said. "He came out in one minute and said very little."
Pelosi also said that GOP presidential nominee John McCain, like Bush, lacks credibility when it comes to talking about the economy. McCain has talked about more regulation of the finance sector, even though he boasted about supporting deregulation in the past, Pelosi noted.
"How else could John McCain, in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, tell the American people the fundamentals of our economy are strong?" she said.
Pelosi pushed back against suggestions that Conrgress wouldn't do anything about the crisis until next year. She said that House committees would begin hearings on the bailout decisions made by Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and on the impact of the $85 billion federal rescue loan to insurance giant AIG .
Pelosi also wondered where that money will come from and asked whether other countries, whose companies also do business with the insurance firm, could help pay for the loan.
"One of the reasons why they had to bail out AIG was because of foreign banks, and both Europe and Asia were saying that they had such a stake in AIG in their own countries. Well, where are they?," she said. "Why are they not participating in this bailout?"
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