Paul O'Neill (Secretary of The Treasury) - Comments and Views

Comments and Views

Please note that this information is not accurate or up-to-date - if you would like current, correct information, please send any correspondence to Mr. O'Neill's office at: One North Shore Center, 12 Federal Street, Suite 100, Pittsburgh, PA 15212.

In a July 25, 2001 International Herald Tribune article, he shared a comment on the theory of an inevitable financial "contagion" in global financial markets and the theory that investors at the time would retreat from emerging markets because of their worries that the financial crises in Argentina and Turkey may spread to Brazil and elsewhere. Mr. O'Neill said that this view was a "fashion" and that "we need to retire that fashion like the hula hoop." "With a magnifying glass, you couldn't find a connection between Turkey and Argentina, except maybe in people's minds", and that in a well-managed global system, investors would not pull back from loans in emerging markets simply because of such isolated troubles.

In an October 16, 2007 Op Ed published in the New York Times, he wrote of the reluctance among politicians to address comprehensive reform in the U.S. health care system. In the opinion, he suggested, among other things, requiring doctors and hospitals to report medical errors within 24 hours, as well as moving malpractice suits out of the civil courts and into a new, independent body. Health care reform, he argues, cannot continue to progress in a piecemeal fashion. Instead, it must take all aspects of the problem—insurance coverage, medical costs, quality of care and information technology—into simultaneous consideration. In O'Neill's Book, The Price of Loyalty, by Ron Suskind, O'Neill relates discussions with Bush and Cheney regarding Social Security, which Bush wanted to privatize. O'Neill says that he and Alan Greenspan had agreed to invest $3.6 Trillion of the Clinton $5.9 Trillion surplus into Social Security.That idea was subsequently rejected.