Outgoing US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said replacement Tim Geithner and his incoming team needed no lessons from him in tackling the financial crisis, in an interview published today.
Paulson, who steps down on January 20 as president-elect Barack Obama takes office, said the only advice he could give Federal Reserve Bank of New York president Geithner would be to stress the importance of acting quickly.
Paulson, 62, told the Financial Times newspaper that he was full of praise for his successors. 'They have got a great team and they don't need advice. I really believe that,' he told the business daily.
Paulson said all he could pass on was the importance of co-ordination, communication and the 'ability to move quickly, to take action when it is necessary'.
Paulson accepted that he may have made mistakes in his handling of the financial crisis. 'I am sure I am going to look back and think of all kinds of things I wish I had done differently,' he said. Any inconsistency came from the patchwork nature of legal authorities and tools, he said.
Paulson said he had feared the world financial system faced meltdown in August when US mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got into trouble and then in September when investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed.
But the lowest point came in late September when the US House of Representatives initially voted to reject his request for a $700 billion bail-out fund to prop up the financial system, he said.
'That was the bottom as far as I was concerned because I had said we were looking at the abyss there if we could not get something done,' he said.
