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Saying he likes to talk about his work at the now-defunct investment firm of Lehman Brothers, Gov. John Kasich said there was “an element of greed” on Wall Street and brokers “conning people” that contributed to the financial collapse of 2008.
In an interview Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Kasich said some investment brokers should have gone to jail “if they broke the law,” and blamed Wall Street’s virtual meltdown in 2008 on brokers “conning people into thinking they could buy homes that they couldn’t afford.”
“It was the packaging of all these mortgages,” said Kasich, who is seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. “It was investment banks doubling down on their investments. And it was the balloon mortgages where you don’t have to pay any principal and all you do is pay interest. And an element of greed, you know.”
Kasich worked in a Columbus office of Lehman Brothers, whose filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sept. 15, 2008, caused the Dow Jones to fall by more than 500 points in just one day, sparking the worst recession since the 1930s.
The financial collapse wiped away trillions of dollars in household wealth for many Americans. In particular, scores of Americans either defaulted on their mortgages or were forced to sell their homes at a loss.
Kasich was interviewed by Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd. Kasich’s remarks on Lehman Brothers were not aired Sunday, but were included in a transcript of the complete interview by NBC.
Kasich, who had no role in Lehman’s collapse, worked for the Wall Street firm after he left Congress in 2000 until it went out of business in 2008. Democrats have long criticized his association with Lehman Brothers, although the strategy appeared to have no impact in 2010 when Kasich ousted Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland.
Kasich said “there were a lot of people” were hurt by the financial collapse and “they lost a lot.”
“But let me be clear: I love to talk about my experience at Lehman Brothers, because you know what I did?” Kasich asked. “I went to the Silicon Valley and I met the futurists. I met the guys at Google.”
“I mean, I met a lot of entrepreneurs,” Kasich said. “I worked with financial services companies. I worked with industrial companies. Look, part of the problem we have is when we elect presidents who didn’t have any real business experience.”
By contrast, Kasich said he “learned about entrepreneurship” while working at Lehman Brothers, adding he “learned about how boards of directors work. And now I make phone calls to” to chief executive officers of large companies.
“We’re up 350,000 jobs in Ohio,” Kasich said. “We’re diversifying the economy. And a lot of that comes from the experience that I learned in watching job creators, because that’s our highest moral purpose, creating jobs.”
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