Stress Test: The Indictment of Timothy Geithner

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/dean-baker/56081/stress-test-the-indictment-of-timothy-geithner

Stress Test: The Indictment of Timothy Geithner
by Dean Baker | May 25, 2014 - 8:46am

At one point in his autobiography, Timothy Geithner proudly recounts responding to a question from Damon Silvers, a lawyer with the AFL-CIO who was at the time a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Silvers had referred to Geithner's background in banking. As Geithner relates the story, he corrected Silvers by pointing out that he had never worked in banking, never worked in investment banking, but rather had spent his whole career in public service.

Anyone reading this book will forgive Silvers for his confusion. Even if a bank had never officially employed Geithner, his attitudes and concerns clearly reflect those of the financial industry. This comes through in matters big and small.

On the small side, Geithner tells us that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan, offered to have his staff draft the financial reform bill. He adds that Dimon later expressed his irritation to President Obama because Geithner would not take him up on this offer, explaining that Dimon apparently did not recognize that having the staff of the country's largest bank draft financial reform legislation was not the message the administration wanted to send the public. Apart from the messaging issue, Geithner doesn't seem to see a problem with having the largest firm in the industry deciding how it will be regulated.

In the same vein Geithner tells us that Robert Rubin didn't like the Volcker Rule. This is a surprise? The Volcker Rule was designed to be a substitute for Glass-Steagall, which Rubin helped repeal as Treasury Secretary. Rubin then went on to personally profit to the tune of more than $100 million as a top executive of Citigroup, the firm that benefitted the most directly from the repeal.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Tim is the porno a society deserves , for not impeaching ShrubCo .

Like the visage of most of the CEO's that have wooed US, can morph into a boyish confused lad, from a cock-sure statistician, with a soliloquy of how we were saved from sure Doom .