Interview With Carly Fiorina

Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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As chief executive of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, Carly Fiorina was the most powerful woman in corporate America. She also became one of the most celebrated and criticized when she was fired from that job in February 2005 in a battle with Hewlett's board—and with tech venture capitalist Tom Perkins in particular—after a controversial merger with Compaq Computer. (She recounted that corporate melodrama in her bestselling memoir Tough Choices.)

Now, at a mere 53, Fiorina is polishing her distinguished résumé with a heavy dose of political activism. She is a top presidential campaign surrogate for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain and chairman of Victory '08, the Republican National Committee's fundraising and get-out-the-vote arm.

She is, of course, frequently mentioned in the media as a possible McCain running mate, but in an interview with Portfolio.com, she sounded more like an aspiring Treasury Secretary.

Lloyd Grove: Every so often you might be unable to resist putting on your McCain surrogate hat, but I was hoping to talk to you just as a businesswoman and as Carly Fiorina, independent thinker.

Carly Fiorina: Well, for better or for worse, I usually am.

L.G.: Okay, good. So let me ask: Who and/or what is to blame for the souring economy, the bear market, and $140-plus oil—the folks in charge?

On Politics:

"I've been a Republican for all of my voting life."

On H.P.:

"My choices and my leadership had been completely validated by what happened from the moment I left."

On Bias:

"I don't think we have come to the point where we understand that sexism is unacceptable. "

But the consequence of that bust has created a tightening of credit across the board. A tightening of consumer credit, a tightening of credit to small businesses, a tightening of credit generally, because these financial institutions—not to get too complicated here, but because they're bound by mark to market accounting—they are in essence writing down their assets as the market falls, causing them to be more cautious. They mark more assets down, I mean we're in kind of a self-perpetuating cycle here. And I don't think that has anything to do with which political party is in office, and I don't think it has anything to do with who is the president of the United States.

L.G.: So you think this was just led essentially by greed on Wall Street?

C.F.: Well, I think there was a situation where there was greed on Wall Street, there was a lack of transparency around a new set of financial instruments, there were a whole new set of financial instruments, there were a whole new set of financial players who were less regulated than banks, and all that together created a situation, which now is rippling through the economy.

L.G.: Who would you blame? I know a number of people have blamed Alan Greenspan for not doing something about this when he had the chance. As you know, he's been on a very active rehabilitation tour.

C.F.: I think it's a little bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking.

L.G.: What's wrong with that?

C.F.: I think it's hard to second-guess all of the decisions that are getting made when you don't have all of the same information, or are not in the same context. But there's no question that a period of easy money made certain risks look more attractive, and less risky than perhaps they should've. But, again, you go back to the tech boom and bust, part of that was how much was invested in telecommunications build-outs, and you had the same kind of thing—a lot of money chasing the opportunity to make more money, and people forgot basic elements of risk. I don't know how well you covered that or whether you remember much about it.

L.G.: [Laughs] I remember putting money into AOL!

C.F.: Exactly. So much the same kind of cycle unfortunately, but all of these cycles are worse and worse because our economies are more interconnected. And in this particular case, the financial instruments that were being used, when I say they lacked transparency, people didn't understand all the connections. Now, by the way, let me quickly say, there is a role for government in getting out of this—and so what a President McCain would do, what a President Obama would do, what Congress has done so far on a bipartisan basis, I'm not suggesting that there is nothing that can be done or should be done. But the cause of it fundamentally is not political, I don't believe.

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