Burr on bank flap: I’d do it again

A few weeks ago, BBR reported on some controversial comments that Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) made about withdrawing family money from a bank when the financial crisis started:

“On Friday night, I called my wife and I said, ‘Brooke, I am not coming home this weekend. I will call you on Monday. Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take,” Burr said, according to the Hendersonville Times-News. “And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday.’ I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash.”

Burr’s comments spread across the blogosphere and were slammed as irresponsible. Some suggested he was encouraging a bank run. Now, Burr says he has no regrets and, if similar circumstances arose, he would do the same thing again.

“Absolutely I’d do it [again],” Burr told WFAE, a public radio station in North Carolina. “The exact situation we were faced with was a freeze bank to bank. And as I stated, my attempt was to make sure my wife had enough cash at home to make it through the next week.”

But Burr added that the bank in question was never in trouble, which raises questions about why he feared it would run out of cash.

“It was not an attempt to run a bank,” Burr said. “Nor was it a bank that was even considered then or now to be in trouble.”

Listen to Burr’s interview with WFAE here.