Hank Paulson: Economic challenges, China — and the birds
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson answers five question with USA TODAY's Susan Page. USA TODAY
BARRINGTON,
Ill. — Hank Paulson, scanning the horizon, sees a day of financial
reckoning approaching. But for China, not the United States.
The
former Treasury secretary, who was at the helm of U.S. economic policy
when the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression broke,
says changes in American banking and government regulation since then
have created a more stable system that has stronger ways to respond to
the ups-and-downs of a market economy.
But
in a new book, he warns, "It's not a question of if, but when, China's
financial system, particularly the trust companies, will face a
reckoning and have to contend with a wave of credit losses and debt
restructurings" — though he also expresses confidence that Beijing has
the tools to manage that and avoid the sort of far-reaching crisis that
hit the United States in 2008.
"It
is important that China stop its over-reliance on municipal debt to
finance infrastructure," he said in an interview. "I take comfort in the
fact that China's leaders understand this."
Henry M. Paulson Jr. has been watching China's emerging economy up
close for a quarter-century. While at Goldman Sachs , he negotiated
early deals with China — including the biggest private equity investment
the firm had ever made, a $2.6 billion investment in the Industrial
and Commercial Bank of China . While leading the Treasury Department
during the George W. Bush administration , he helped create the
Strategic Economic Dialogue to foster regular, high-level consultations
between the two nations.
In Dealing With China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower,
published Tuesday by Twelve Books, Paulson argues that the United
States needs a more clear-eyed, coordinated and consistent approach
toward the formidable challenge from China. In an interview, he says
that should include a more welcoming stance than the Obama
administration has taken so far toward the new Chinese-led Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank.
But
the question he gets most often is whether the financial meltdown in
the United States seven years ago, which has had consequences that
continue to ripple through many Americans' lives, could happen again
here.
"Of
course it could," he responds, sitting at a game table in the rustic
home he and his wife, Wendy, built four decades ago. It is tucked amid
white oak trees in the neighborhood where he grew up, abutting a Cook
County forest preserve where they can indulge their passion for
bird-watching. "But I don't see anything the magnitude we dealt with
happening in the U.S. anytime soon. We have already taken some very,
very significant steps. Our banks are much better capitalized. They're
much better managed. We have better regulation. We have better risk
control.
"We
still have plenty of problems we need to correct, and there are plenty
of risks in the global economy. Financial crises happen every 8, 10, 12
years. But the key question Americans should be asking themselves, do we
have the tools necessary to make sure we don't have the sort of crisis
we had or it spills over into our economy?"
Do we?
"I believe we've got the necessary tools," he replies, "and I don't see those sort of excesses building up any time soon."
Former Treasury secretary Henry Paulson and his wife, Wendy, in Barrington, Ill. (Photo: Anne Ryan, USA TODAY)
THE BOBOLINKS ARE BACK
There
are binoculars hanging around Hank Paulson's neck, and Wendy Paulson is
toting a tripod with binoculars attached as they tromp across a muddy
field. In recent days, they've spied Sandhill cranes, yellow-shafted
flickers and a yellow-bellied sapsucker, which has left tell-tell holes
drilled in a tree. Bobolinks, grasshopper sparrows and Henslow's
sparrows have returned to this land, where controlled burning has helped
restore it to its native state.
At the moment, though, there only seem to be hordes of blackbirds, cawing overhead.
They
have gone birding all over the world. Her binoculars are dented from a
fall in Belize . Their favorite sighting happened just last year, in
China's eastern Jiangsu province , when they went in search of an
iconic shorebird on the verge of extinction.
"There
were sheets of rain," he recalls. The wetlands muck was so deep that
Wendy's boots were sucked off her feet. "We were freezing. I could
hardly feel the binoculars with my fingers. Just when we thought we
weren't going to see it, suddenly my wife Wendy spotted it and we got it
in the scope and we saw the spoon-billed sandpiper."
The spoon-billed sandpaper: Paulson grins at the memory.
Now
69, he has a distinctive raspy voice, balding pate and earnest manner
that became familiar on TV news shows when the Bush administration was
scrambling to prevent a financial crisis from sparking a depression. He
points out with pride the driveway he cleared with a chainsaw in the
1970s, when they built their house a stone's throw from a childhood
home, where his mother still lives. He dragged rocks to form a low
retaining wall. The living room sports the wood-burning fireplace they
installed then to hold down on heating bills.
His
schedule has slowed since the frantic days of the financial crisis, but
he's not really the retiring sort. In 2013, he helped launch Risky
Business, an initiative with former New York City mayor Michael
Bloomberg and billionaire activist Tom Steyer that focuses on the
economic costs of climate change. (He calls climate change the biggest
single risk to the global economy.)
He
also founded the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago ,
which aims to promote economic ties and environmental cooperation
between the United States and China.
China
has long been a draw for him. He has visited it more than 100 times,
first as a business executive interested in making deals and then as a
government official trying to shape policy. He first met the current
Chinese president, Xi Jinping , when he was a provincial official,
greeting a visiting American businessman.
Paulson returned from his most recent trip less than three weeks ago. He's scheduled to go back in June.
"Virtually
every significant global problem, whether you're talking about how do
you sustain global growth or protect the environment, to minimizing the
threat of terrorism or the threat of nuclear proliferation, all of these
become easier if you're working in a complementary way with China and
much more difficult if you're working (at) cross-purposes with them. . .
.
"The stakes are very big, and they're big on the upside and the downside."
Then-Treasury
secretary Henry Paulson and Xi Jinping, then the Zhejiang Province
Communist Party secretary, chat at a pavilion on Sept. 19, 2006, in
Hangzhou, China. (Photo: Eugene Hoshiko, AP)
'A FORMIDABLE COMPETITOR'
For
the United States, relations with China have been shadowed by domestic
politics and overshadowed by recent international crises with ISIS,
Iran, Iraq and Syria .
That
worries Paulson. He faults the Obama administration for not designating
"one go-to person" to speak for the president and coordinate policy
with China, and he thinks it was a misstep when the U.S. urged European
allies to rebuff Beijing's invitation to join a new Chinese-led
international investment bank, called AIIB.
Germany, France, Italy, England and others joined anyway last month.
Instead,
he says, the United States should have told China, "We want to work
with you and give you ideas and advocate" for international standards,
perhaps joining the bank as an observer rather than a member.
"It's
a new China in that it is now a formidable competitor," he says. "It is
flexing its muscles on the global stage. Chinese President Xi Jinping
isn't waiting for us or anyone else to declare them a great power. He
believes he already is one, and so they are starting to be more
assertive in terms of their foreign policy. That shouldn't be a shock.
That's what every other great power has done."
Besides, China is not the biggest threat to the preeminence of the United States in the global economy, he says. The United States' own dysfunctional political system is.
"I
have people come up to me all the time and they're concerned that maybe
China has devised a better form of capitalism; they're going to eat our
lunch," he says. "Let me tell you, there's no way they have. The United
States has by far the strongest, deepest, most innovative economy. We
can make as big a mistake exaggerating Chinese strength as we can
underestimating their potential."
More
perilous, he says, is the failure of America's political system to
address seriously the nation's most pressing economic problems, among
them a growing national debt and increasing income inequality.
"The United States' fate is in our own hands," he says, banging the
table with the flat of his hand. "The biggest risk is not China, but the
biggest risk is that our own political system won't do the things that
we need to have it do in order for us to remain strong."
No comments:
Post a Comment