Some notes from Treasury Secretary Paulson’s 1:45 press conference:
- Paulson says, we can be confident in the banking industry, there is no cause for significant alarm.
- In response to several similar questions Paulson continued his mantra from the past several weeks: “The root of all our financial industry problems is the housing market; when we have stability in housing we will have stability in the market place.”
- Paulson said there is a balance between regulation and market discipline, we can’t depend on one or the other. However, it could be argued that the Treasury Dept and Paulson have never fully relied on market discipline so they can’t really make that statement.
- When asked point blank if there would be more bailouts in the future Paulson waffled, he sounded like he wanted to avoid them in the future, but he didn’t rule them out completely.