The fine art of Talking TO People rather than Talking AT them with a teleprompter.

May 14 (Bloomberg) — Former President Bill Clinton called on the Obama administration to make a “genuine effort” to prod healthy banks to repay the Troubled Asset Relief Program and urged Congress to act on legislation to cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions before the global warming summit in Copenhagen this December.

Referring to banks that were pressed late last year to take TARP funding, Clinton said yesterday: “Give them a chance to pay it back and maybe just give it back without the interest or anything else.” Unencumbered by TARP loans, financial institutions could set executive compensation without fearing a public backlash, he said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

The government could say, “you’re back on your own; pay whatever you want” to executives, Clinton said.

On securing a global agreement on climate change, a goal that alluded him as president, Clinton said Congress needs to pass legislation before the summit, or be “fairly clear that we’re going to pass a good bill.” Such efforts are needed for the U.S. to persuade China and India to agree to a new treaty, Clinton said.

Clinton, 62, also gauged the prospects “good” for Congress to pass this year the energy bill and an overhaul of the health-care system sought by President Barack Obama.

This week on Capitol Hill, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee reached a compromise that would commit the U.S. to cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 17 percent by 2020. That figure exceeds the target wanted by Obama, who had recommended 14 percent.

Obama yesterday hailed the agreement, calling it “a major step forward in building the kind of clean-energy economy that will reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.”

Comments on Summers

Clinton said in the interview that Lawrence Summers, whose service in his administration culminated in a stint as Treasury secretary, would make a good chairman of the Federal Reserve. He said he also supports Summers in his current role as head of Obama’s National Economic Council.

“I like knowing that he’s where he is,” Clinton said, “for the simple reason that he lived eight years through this system we set up.” Asked if Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke should be reappointed, Clinton said: “That’s beyond my pay grade. Whoever the president appoints is fine with me.”

Clinton defended former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and said that as president, he made “absolutely” the right decision to reappoint him. He faulted Greenspan for arguing against regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission of derivatives trading and said he regretted not challenging the Republican-controlled Congress to insist on regulation.

Derivatives Regulation

“He was wrong about one thing,” said Clinton, citing Greenspan’s position on derivatives regulation and how he convinced Clinton’s economic advisers to adopt a hands-off approach. “I regret that, and even though I could not have succeeded, the Republicans would have blocked me, I wish I really would have raised a lot of Cain about that.”

“What I missed was, you got a gazillion billion dollars in derivatives, even if only five people got hurt directly, millions of people would be hurt indirectly by the crashing impact on the market,” said Clinton, who yesterday also appeared on a panel at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

On executive compensation, Clinton said, “as a general philosophical matter, the government should not set corporate salaries.” Still, he said the current situation, with firms such as American International Group Inc. largely owned by taxpayers, created a dilemma and that compensation at these businesses should be limited.

He called the argument made by some banks that they needed to pay big bonuses to retain talented workers “bull.”

Copenhagen Summit

The former president declined to say if Obama, who hasn’t announced whether he will go to the global warming summit Copenhagen, should attend. Clinton said he expects that the president, Vice President Joe Biden or Clinton’s wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will lead the U.S. delegation.

“The main thing is the president has given it a high priority,” the former president said.

The prospect for agreements on climate change and a health- care overhaul depend in part on the ability of government, working with the private sector, to retool their delivery systems, he said.

“We have to prove that we can change the way we produce and consume energy,” he said. “‘In health care, we have to prove that we can both cover everyone and do it” cheaper.

Health-Care Premiums

Proposals to tax employees for the health-care premiums that their employers pay for them are unlikely to pass Congress because of opposition from House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, Clinton said.

Still, he said he liked the idea of taxing the premiums as a way to force Americans to dedicate more resources to prevention and their individual wellness. “I wish what the law would say is that if you want full tax deductibility, you’ve got to have this, this, and this,” Clinton said.

Discussing his personal viewing habits, Clinton pronounced the cable-TV drama “Mad Men,” which depicts the advertising industry of the early 1960s, a “great show.” He said its fashion styles, in particular the “narrow, narrow” ties worn by the male characters, evoked the wardrobe of his younger years.

He saved his own skinny ties for years and now they reside at his presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas. “They were all thin, thin, thin,” said Clinton. “But I was thin, thin, thin, too.”

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