MR. BROKAW: The market did go up a record amount. Since 1987 it went up more than 600 points in two days. But that really is a false positive sign, as they would say in laboratory testing, isn’t it?
SEC’Y PAULSON: Yeah, I, I would say this. It’s not what we should be looking at. It is not what we should be looking at. The stock market going up and down is not what we should be looking at. We need to look at what’s going on in the credit markets, and they are still very fragile right now and frozen. And we need to do something to deal with this and deal with it quickly.
MR. BROKAW: There is a big political debate about whether, whether the fundamentals of the American economy are strong or not. Is it fair to say that the fundamentals of the American economy may not be strong, but, in fact, they’re staggering at the moment?
SEC’Y PAULSON: Well, what I should say is, I won’t bet against the American people. We’re an entrepreneurial people, a hard-working people, and we will work through this, we always do. I wouldn’t bet against the American people, and I wouldn’t bet against the long-term fundamentalists of this country. But this is a humbling experience to see so much fragility in our capital markets and to ask how did we ever get here.
Read it all. I enjoyed the interview with Mayor Michael Bloomberg also.