I named my last company after the first US Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton believed in the sanctity of a contract. One of his quotes I often use is “a promise must never be broken.”
We have come a long way since Hamilton’s successful defense of the integrity of public and private contracts to our current situation and Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson’s plan to freeze interest rates on private mortgages:
Paulson Goes to Washington, Loses Way
By Caroline Baum – Bloomberg News (4 Dec 2007)
“The modification of existing contracts, without the full and willing agreement of all parties to these contracts, risks significant erosion of 200 years of contract law,” said Joshua Rosner, managing director at Graham-Fisher & Co., an independent research firm in New York.
Before joining the current Administration, Paulson lead Goldman Sachs. Goldman is one of the firms instrumental in creating the mortgage bubble. For more on Paulson’s former partners at Goldman latest doing in the mortgage markets, see: