On Monday, Richard Burr, Republican senator from North Carolina, told Americans that he is a self-centered, irresponsible so-and-so who wouldn’t think twice about helping to trigger a run on the banks during a financial crisis if it meant his own family’s money was safe.
Actually, he didn’t say that — but he might as well have:
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) says when the financial crisis began he encouraged his wife to withdraw all the cash she possibly could from their local bank.
During a speech on the economy last night, Burr related his immediate reaction the week the crisis began. After hearing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson relay a story about a major company having trouble transferring money between banks, Burr became worried about the solvency of his own bank.
“On Friday night, I called my wife and I said, ‘Brooke, I am not coming home this weekend. I will call you on Monday. Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take,” Burr said, according to the Hendersonville Times-News. “And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday.’ I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.”
Matthew Yglesias points out how stupid Sen. Burr is, in addition to being irresponsible, since he apparently doesn’t know about FDIC:
Thanks to deposit insurance, there’s no actual need for people to be worried. But Senator Burr’s effort to whip people into a panic could lead to runs and bank failures. That, in turn, will lead to people losing jobs. People could even lose their business through no fault of their own other than having customers who chose to take the words of a United States Senator seriously. I’m having a hard [time] imagining what Burr could have been thinking.
And yes, this is the same Sen. Burr who held up Tammy Duckworth’s nomination for an assistant secretary position in the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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