tim geithner

For Tim Geithner, it’s been a difficult week.
“Conservatives agree that as point person, you failed,” Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) told the Treasury secretary yesterday during a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee. “Liberals are growing in that consensus as well. Poll after poll shows that the American public has lost confidence in this president’s ability [...]

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner got an earful last week from House Democrats wary of the White House proposal to pay for government rescues of Wall Street firms by taxing healthy competitors only after Washington steps in. The critics want companies to pre-pay instead into a kind of sitting insurance fund to be used for the [...]

It’s no mystery that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is the ultimate Wall Street insider. But it seems that more and more Democrats are losing their patience with what they perceive as his protectionism of the finance industry at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. The latest to weigh in is Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who [...]

Testifying before House lawmakers yesterday, Sheila Bair, head of  the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, endorsed much of the controversial proposal to grant the White House new powers to take over Wall Street investment firms when their failure threatens the larger financial system.
A timely, orderly resolution process that could be applied to both banks and non-bank [...]

“Mr. Secretary, I’m not a man that fears this administration or you,” Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) told Geithner. “But I do fear the accumulation of power exercised by someone in the future that can be extraordinary.”

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who’s testifying this morning before the House Financial Services Committee on legislation empowering the White House to take over Wall Street firms when their failure threatens the finance system on the whole, just made a curious claim. Asked by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) whether the legislation grants the White House the [...]

Here’s the money quote from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, interviewed Monday by CNN about the role of government in regulating Wall Street:
The financial markets are too important to the economy to be left to the markets alone. You need a strong framework of regulations, a much stronger framework than we had.

Just how tough are the Obama administration’s new executive compensation limits for bailed out firms? Well, as a hint, Wall Street sees them as no threat at all. Indeed, The Washington Post today gets a few telling quotes from bankers who are giddy that these are the only standards they’ll be held to.
“Our people kind [...]

The Obama administration is poised to tap Kenneth Feinberg, the mediation guru who headed the 9/11 victim compensation fund, to monitor the nation’s bailed-out firms for compliance with executive compensation limits, The Wall Street Journal reported today. First, though, the White House has to sift through the tangle of executive pay restrictions imposed by Congress [...]

As the Wall Street bailout nears its first anniversary, a risky aspect of the financial rescue has flown largely under the radar.