Had the Fed not done what they did, we'd be in a world of hurt right now.
* * * * * J B K * * * * *
San Francisco
Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy came "very close" to collapsing into a second Great Depression and the government had no alternative to bailing out financial firms, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said.
"There was a time when the credit markets had essentially frozen and when blue chip industrial companies were having trouble raising money," Paulson said in an interview today on Bloomberg Television. "I knew then we were on the brink."
"We easily could have had unemployment of 25 percent," he said. "That would have meant millions of additional jobs lost, millions of additional homes lost, trillions more lost in savings. It would have been terrible."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axCgjHqNkaw0
