If this is the greatest story from wall street and is considered financial history then middle class america, what’s left of it, will continue to become history.

This created no jobs, no product, nothing useful to anyone except the person who got tons of money from gambling.

When the gambling goes bad the middle class pays for it.

NPR – This is sick reporting.

Rich guy gets richer betting on the suffering of average Americans. I just don’t think I can listen to this one. Hopefully there is a warm stone in hell that this guy will sit on for eternity.

This man is a !#@, period. I’m sick of this stuff.
They should tax all these kinds of transactions.

I heard an interview with Gregory Zuckerman elsewhere and was struck by the way he treats the story as a game, with no reflection on the fact that the game being played destroyed the American economy.

This is a story of Wall Street gambling, with no benefit to the economy as a whole.

Way to go Tom! Thank you for holding this financial reporter’s feet to the fire. Too many business reporters are caught up in “The Game” and become just as amoral as the Wall Street tycoons they are writing about. There were huge moral consequences to John Paulson’s actions and yet he is celebrated as the whiz bang billionaire.

Many financial journalists dropped the ball. Only a few had the guts to go against the party atmosphere and report the truth about what was going on. There was a Bloomberg reporter Mark Pittman who did this work. He died tragically last week of heart problems.

Thank you Tom Ashbrook for remembering what journalism is supposed to be about.

John Paulson’s strategy was brilliant. Partially for the obvious reason that he was right and made billions. But also because we know how the game is played for the super-rich hedge funds: if he was wrong and lost, the public would have picked up the tab. So it was almost a risk-free investment. Like a regular citizen being able to use millions of public funds to buy lottery tickets. The worst of this is that the capital gains tax rate for the uber-wealthy is only 15% – so they pay a much lower rate than working Americans.

So can it be said that taxpayers paid out on John Paulson’s $20B AIG insurance policy?

Fascinating! He is excusing this thievery by saying “AIG was welling INSURANCE. He was buying INSURANCE.” Implying that this was legitimate, conservative, beyond question … when everyone involved expended every effort in making sure it was NEITHER called, nor regulated as, I-N-S-U-R-A-N-C-E!! Please call him on this.

Trying to blame John Paulson for the poor business practices of others, especially the banks, is foolish. He was not able to foresee the bailouts, he was not intending to harm the economy, and by all evidence was merely doing his job within the system as he knew it.

Zukerman has a surprisingly difficult time seeing the connection between CDS payouts and the government bailouts (the taxpayers). This is the problem. It’s a problem of the financial system, not of this particular hedge fund manager. And the Obama administration is not adequately implementing needed new regulations to address that problem. If we had a truly free market system, where these guys were both the winners and losers of their bets, then no one would care, and everything would be fine.

To Greg at 11:34 am EST …. YES. If AIG had failed, he would have had to fight with the other claimants for a portion of whatever assets (if any) remained. YES, we covered his gamble.

What, exactly, did this man produce that’s worth $20B? This type of investment — tied not to production but to gaming the system — is wholly destructive. The purpose of markets is to support productive activities; to make goods and services that improve people’s lives. Investments not tied to that type of production are gambling, not investing, and should be illegal.

john paulson is a genius. I would like to know if he is betting on the cannabis industry out producing many other industries. doesnt this mean that the transportation, power companies, food, and textile industries that do not realize and utilize the potential of the cannabis industries will fall and go bankrupt. What will happen when many people realize that air pollution is actually far more dangerous than ciggarets. along with the fact that cannabis feeds on this air pollution with its by product being OXYGEN AND GLOBAL COOLING.

Attacking this guy is misplaced anger. There were plenty who made money on both sides of the trade. You should be angry at those who fomented the bubble in the first place. One simple regulation could have prevented the whole mess: you have to put 10% down on your house, and you can’t refinance without 10% equity; and you have to have a job! It would also help to end the ridiculous tax breaks for home ownership. These are simple regulations that don’t require an army of bureaucrats to enforce.

One interesting point from the interview is Paulson’s gold investing, which is something I’ve been doing myself. The housing bubble was no secret and it’s no secret that the printing presses at the central banks have been in overdrive and that the US, along with many other debtor nations, is borrowing well beyond its capacity to service its debts and deficits. The smart money is divesting out of dollars as fast as possible, converting those dollars to precious metals, commodities and stocks.

When the dollar finally collapses, don’t be angry at those who profited from the collapse. Be angry at the profligate government and central bank that caused it happen.

US National debt: 12 Trillion
US Private debt: 16.7 Trillion
Mortgage debt: 14.4 Trillion
Personal debt: 2.4 Trillion
Credit card debt: 870 Billion

Social security liability: 14 Trillion
Prescription drug liability: 18.5 Trillion
Medicare liability: 73.7 Trillion
Total unfunded liability: 106.3 Trillion

He found his nitch don’t be jealous.

I agree with the author that Paulson is neither hero nor villain. He’s a clever guy who made money by making a bet that paid off hugely. Had he lost the bet, which could have occurred had the government intervened earlier, he’d be just another failed hedge fund manager. As pointed out he does add value by betting against the boosters and optimists that drive the asset bubbles.

Your guest claims to be an old-school journalist without judgments or opinions (that he’s willing to tell you, at least) but at one point on your show he claimed “you need markets to have vibrant economies.” We can argue for weeks about whether he’s right or wrong, but that is inarguably an opinion that colors his entire perception of this story. Why would anyone want to read this book without knowing whether its author has a clear perception of his subject? Why not offer a judgment or two? It’s a little bit like refusing to admit that povery sucks because you’re a journalist without opinions. Paulsen’s a crook; that might be something of an opinion, but among normal Americans it’s the vast majority’s opinion.

This Wall Street implosion was the biggest, most impacting fraud in my lifetime. There’s nothing journalistic about lacking moral clarity and refusing to call a spade a spade, in this case calling a fraudster a crook.

What this WSJ hack barely admits is that only the well-heeled Wall Street buggers had anyway to “bet against” the housing bubble, which thousands of “normal” people saw for what it was, even if they themselves couldn’t afford a mortgage. Most Americans had no money, savvy or opportunity to do any betting. Paulsen only looks prescient when compared to the privileged idiots on Wall Street who had no idea WHY anyone got ARMs in the first place (poor education and near poverty!).

The only way Paulson can shed the crook title is by giving all that money to charity. Pretty much all of it. Pretty much immediately. He can’t just start a foundation or two later in life. That’s stolen American workers’ money: give it back now when the effects of your theft are still most painful.

Neither “ass kisser” nor “in the tank” adequately explain your guest’s blindness to his own bias: I think his head was fully inserted into Wall Street’s anus years ago. At least he’s working at the right newspaper.

And, Tom, I was really hoping you’d give him the Sister Soulja treatment. You tried a couple times, but I was screaming at myself, urging you to get tougher.

It’s all just another bump on the road to third world nationhood.

The housing boom and the banking crisis have also done a great job of masking our nation’s real fundamental economic problems in the forms of global labor arbitrage and population explosion. For a couple years the housing bubble masked the damage done to the U.S. economy and employment market by global labor arbitrage. Then the banking crisis attracted all of the blame for our nation’s economic problems.

The housing bubble helped mask the loss of middle class manufacturing and knowledge-based jobs and the banking crisis took the blame for those losses with few people bothering to ask why our nation’s economic infrastructure was so weak to begin with.

I have a really great friend (who now is being tested for cancer no doubt stress induced) who was a real hard worker that has lost practically everything including her house that was almost paid for because a bastard son of some sort immoral assignation between a drug and alcohol induced addict and a dead animal decided to play with working peoples lives to make himself some chump change for sport. When he finally realizes the magnitude of his crimes to humanity I only hope that before he puts a large caliber revolver to his head he will have the decency to put it in a waste basket before pulling the trigger and save some one the unpleasant job of cleaning up some more of his mess.
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To NPR,
Am I being ad hominem, off-topic, unduly repetitive, or personal? Given that I haven’t mentioned any names and if some one objects, I will only say if the shoe fits …… He has played with real peoples lives that haven’t committed any sort of crime other than to be wiped out by an economy that was knowingly diddled to make himself some adult money. This is not a fit subject for polite entertainment and I am not amused.

Paulson took a ridiculous and gutsy stand at the peak of the housing boom. Nobody believed him then, including the “pros”, so why shouldn’t he be aptly rewarded for the measured risks he took.

Before pointing the finger at a LUCKY and brave capitalist, we should be more concerned with our own affairs and their immediate & second order effects on personal financial habits (or lack of) and the psychology of finance/investments in anything we participate in. ALSO, the finger should be pointed at the OFHEO folks, not to mention FNM and FRE.

Going against the herd during a stampede is no easy or passive decision. He should rightly be rewarded for the steps he took. Don’t be jealous.

Well, No facts in the article. No reason to think the book has any.

The kicker is that the profit was taxed at a lower rate thanks to our buddies in Washington.

The majority of America needs to stop pointing fingers, stop blaming people and start taking responsiblity. Evenhtough its everyone’s dream to own a house, you should know what you can afford and what you can’t. Him “betting” on the collaps is just as greedy as sometime take advantage of a subprime mortgage. The guy was smart, took a gamble and made a killing, that simple.

Mr. Paulson reminds me of someone who found a ward full of terminal cancer patients being mistreated or more likely ignored by their doctors. Then he found a number of insurance companies willing to write an unlimited number of policies on their lives without bothering to determine their conditions. This was in spite of the fact that the purchaser of the policies had no vested interest in them and in fact was eager for them to die as soon as possible. When they started to drop, he cleaned up.

Ive never seen so many losers who think that this man’s good fortune has anything to do with their pathetic little lives. He was smart and made money, most of you piss and moan that its someone elses fault and that your all financial, intellectual, moral losers. Its men like Paulson who made America great so that human pestilance like you can squack on the internet that anyone owes you anything. When this unintended “democracy” finnaly fails, I cant wait to see those that produce to crush your skulls and beat you back into the hovels you deserve to live in!

The last two female callers have it right.

Tom, since we are not to make ad hominen attacks, allow me to state that were 12-2 5:45 p.m. comments made by some anonymous individual not on this board, I would attribute them to a mean-spirited, blindfolded, propaganda-spewing, unmitigated moron. But certainly no one on this board…

And as to the Masters of the Universe who managed to become insanely wealthy by leveraging private gains while laying off all the risk on the public sector and the American taxpayer, not to mention the millions who lost their jobs and incomes through no faults of their own … I absolutely hate every one of you without reservation or apology. May there be a special place in hell for all of you.

Blaming Paulson is silly. It is like blaming the worms who feed on the body of a murder victim. It was the greedy people, mortgage brokers, bankers, government (CRA, etc.) who created the problem. Betting against a rigged system doesn’t make him bad. Now he is betting against our fiat dollar, a bet I have been making for about 9 months (doing quite well so far thank you). Does that make him responsible for the ultimate fall of the dollar? No!