President Bush nailed our economy’s crisis as only he could: “Wall Street got drunk and now it’s got a hangover.”
Unaware a camcorder was taping him at a private fund-raiser in Houston, Bush took a hard swing at Wall Street’s titans for consuming a huge binge of profits for years at the expense of overheating the housing industry.
“No question about it,” said Bush, a reformed boozer.
“Wall Street got drunk. The question is – how long will it [take to] sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?” In obvious good spirits, Bush said of his hangover crack, “That’s one reason I asked you to turn off your TV cameras.”
His comic video – appearing on a blog yesterday of TV reporter Miya Shay of ABC affiliate KTRK – was a sharp contrast to the latest grim news hitting the nation’s banks.
Two more major banks – Wachovia and Washington Mutual – reported wide losses as a result of the mortgage meltdown inflamed by junk securities that Wall Street created.
Wachovia, which hired Treasury Undersecretary Robert Steel as chief executive officer two weeks ago, reported a record quarterly loss of $8.9 billion, compared with a profit of $2.3 billion a year earlier.
Washington Mutual, the biggest US savings and loan, lost $3.3 billion as falling home prices left a record number of its borrowers unable to keep up with mortgage payments.
Bush has been pressuring Congress to bail out the mortgage industry and lift the sagging economy, but was caught off guard trashing Wall Street at the Houston event last Friday.
The TV reporter’s blog said Bush had asked guests at the fund-raiser to turn off their video cameras, but not all complied. It wasn’t clear who made the tape.
In the brief tape, Bush worked his audience like a standup comic, poking fun at his wife Laura in her hunt for a new home in Dallas after he leaves the White House.
He said he told her, “Honey, we’ve been on government pay now for 14 years. Go slow.”
Bush expressed his fondness for Crawford, where he owns a ranch. “Unfortunately, after eight years of asking her to sacrifice I am no longer the decision-maker,” he said, amid laughter from the crowd. “She’ll be deciding – thanks for the suggestion.”
Meanwhile, the continuing purge of bad bank paper helped lift the Dow Jones industrial average 135.16 , or 1.2 percent, to 11,602.50. The S&P 500 rose 1.4 percent, up 17 to 1,277.00. The Nasdaq gained 1.1 percent, or 24.43, to 2,303.96.