Political Quotes

“That's right, and there is something else to know on secured creditors. Usually, secured creditors take a lower interest rate. They get paid back at a lower rate because they are first in line. When Chrysler went under, what happened is that, rather than making the bondholders whole first, they actually had their secured interests taken away from them, and other creditors were made whole first. How can you do that? That's an abrogation of contract law; an abrogation of bankruptcy law. And so we saw a violation of law. That's something that is foundational to the United States that gives us a good business climate. The rule of law is a good thing. The sanctity of contracts works. When we start violating the law and when we start penetrating contracts and violating contracts, that's when we get into trouble with our business climate. We saw that happen in this bailout. Not only did the Federal Government take money that we don't have. Remember, we had to borrow money. So this wasn't money that we had sitting in a bank vault here in Washington, D.C., where we opened up the bank vault and we pulled out big wads of $700 billion that we could give to the Treasury Secretary to give out to whatever his favorite private business was or his favorite group was. No. We had to borrow that money from the Chinese or whoever we could go and sell our debt to. And so who's going to pay that back? That money is going to be paid back by the debt-paying generation.…”