Vice President Biden made headlines for his remarks about the Taliban in a Daily Beast interview, but as the Telegraph’s Nile Gardiner noted yesterday, his call for Europe to craft a big Obama-style bailout also caused a stir.
From the transcript:
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VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: We’re using every bit of influence, cajoling — from my getting in a plane, to the president appearing, talking to [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner, engaging, and being very blunt. I was in Greece [earlier this month]. The president has been meeting with our G8 partners and specifically — very, very specifically on the phone with everyone from [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel to [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy, [British Prime Minister David] Cameron. I mean we are engaged in making it clear to them that there is an answer. They’ve got to step up.
NEWSWEEK: But they’re looking to us for something we can’t give anymore, which is cash to bail them out.
BIDEN: We’re not going to. These guys at the end of the day are going to have to choose: they either lose now or lose later. And if they lose later, they lose real, real big.
NEWSWEEK: And it’s got to be their bailout, not ours?
BIDEN: Exactly right. We did our bailout. They’ve got to do their bailout.
NEWSWEEK: But they’re looking to us for something we can’t give anymore, which is cash to bail them out.
BIDEN: We’re not going to. These guys at the end of the day are going to have to choose: they either lose now or lose later. And if they lose later, they lose real, real big.
NEWSWEEK: And it’s got to be their bailout, not ours?
BIDEN: Exactly right. We did our bailout. They’ve got to do their bailout.
“With their track record, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are probably the last two leaders on earth to be giving advice on a debt crisis issue, and the message coming from Washington is clearly the wrong one.” Gardiner writes.
