Fox News Channel “Your World with Neil Cavuto”

Fox news Channel "Your World"

Interview wth Carly Fiorina, McCain Campaign Senior Advisor

Interviewer: Neil Cavuto Subject: Today's Wall Street Drop

Federal News Service Transcript

September 15, 2008 Monday


Mr. Cavuto: Now to Carly Fiorina, John McCain's senior economic adviser, of course the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. You know how this stuff goes, Carly, that they say the party in the White Hosue is the party to blame, and the Democrats say Republicans are to blame.


Ms. Fiorina: Yep, of course. And of course, what the Obama campaign is conveniently forgetting, among other things here, is that it is the Democratically controlled Congress over the last two years that failed to do anything about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and let those institutions get totally out of control so that the taxpayer had to step in and bail them out. I think it is absolutely fair for John McCain to say, as he has been saying for at least eight months, that we need regulatory reform in Washington, that in many cases the regulatory agencies have not done their jobs, and that we also need to instill and require more transparency and accountability on Wall Street.


Mr. Cavuto: Let me ask you, Carly, when I heard Governor Palin attacking prior bailouts and that she was grateful that this time the government wouldn't provide one to Lehman, is that to say that John McCain was against all the prior rescues we had of Fannie, of Freddie, of Bear Stearns, what?


Ms. Fiorina: No. No, in fact, John McCain at the time said that he supported the bailout of Fannie and Freddie and Bear Stearns because he recognized that it was important for the government to step in and prevent systemic risk in the case of Bear Stearns and make sure that Americans still had access to capital for homes in the case of Fannie and Freddie. However, he also said that it was a primary importance that having used taxpayer money here that taxpayers are protected first and foremost, that taxpayers should not be used to give the CEOs of Fannie and Freddie a nice golden parachute, and that the top priority must be to protect those taxpayers going forward. However, he also said that he supported not bailing out Lehman Brothers because, of course, Lehman Brothers, as you well know, had more time to get their own house in order and more financial tools at their disposal than did Bear Stearns.


Mr. Cavuto: Let me ask you, some of your old high-tech brethren friends are saying they, too, find it difficult to get loans, to get money because of this financial chill, Carly. Is it spreading? Is it, as some have argued, a contagion?


Ms. Fiorina: I think it is spreading. I think it's undeniably true that credit has become tighter all the way around. We see a lot of small businesses having trouble getting access to credit. I think personal credit is harder to get a hold of. So yes, this is a very worrisome situation. John McCain has been talking about it for some time. It's critically important that we regain confidence in the markets.


And one of the ways to regain confidence is to make sure that there is both transparency and accountability. You know, Neil, you and I have talked about this before. Let's be honest. A lot of what happened here is Wall Street made a bunch of bets on the assumption that housing prices could only go up, never down. They hid a lot of these financial complex instruments off balance sheet where nobody either understood them or see them. And greed took over common sense. We can't let that happen again.


Mr. Cavuto: All right. Carly, thank you very much.



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