Tim Geithner

  • 06 Nov 2012 at 1:02 PM

Bloomberg Worried About Tim Geithner’s Ability To Put Food On The Table

By

As you may have heard, because you’ve read the reports reports or picked up on the Morse code message he’s blinked out during every appearance on CNBC or he threw himself on the hood of your car and screamed “Get me outta here” the last time you drove up to the Treasury building, Tim Geithner is ready to say good-bye to Washington. Has been for some time, in fact, but previous requests to go home were all denied. Now that his bosses are supposedly going to allow him to leave in the event Obama is reelected, many are wondering what will be next for TG. Despite having spent the majority of his career in public service and giving the impression that he has no desire to work for Wall Street, Bloomberg is thinking that with the albatross that is his unsellable Larchmont house around his neck, a family, and college tuition to pay, Geithner may not have a choice. Read more »

  • 23 Oct 2012 at 1:27 PM

Larry Summers Supposedly Too Rough Around The Edges To Be Named Fed Chairman

By

Who should replace Ben S. Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve when his term ends in January 2014? If anyone cared to ask us, we’d say no one: we like our Fed Chairman soft-spoken, bearded, and just as comfortable in dad jeans as they are in their bespoke Jos. A. Bank suits. But nobody asked and, according to Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bernanke has told “close friends” that regardless of whether or not Obama wins a second term, he’s ready to move on. Apparently qualified successors are few and far between and while Larry Summers is said to be “at the top of the list,” the fact that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner may finally be granted freedom from his own personal Guantanamo Bay and will also necessitate a replacement who will have to work closely with the new Fed Chair poses some staffing issues, on account of the perception that Summers is somewhat difficult to work with. Read more »

  • 01 Oct 2012 at 5:57 PM

Make Him An Offer

By




[EamonJavers, earlier]

  • 25 Jul 2012 at 4:55 PM

Tim Geithner Dealt With Libor Manipulation By Writing Strongly Worded Letters And Then Lending Billions Of Dollars At Libor-Based Rates

By

Tim Geithner had a nice chat with Congress about Libor in a theoretically unrelated hearing today, and since Congressional hearings are mostly about restating everyone’s pre-existing prejudices I figured I’d lay out my Libor hobbyhorses:

  • Nobody really has ever been all that troubled by the fact that banks manipulated Libor to make themselves look like they could borrow in 2007-2008, while everyone is at least acting all shocked shocked that banks manipulated Libor to juice derivatives profits, but that contrast is awkward because in a certain light those are the same activity, so everyone has to look all horrified by stuff they were obviously cool with four years ago.
  • Everybody knew that banks understated Libor in 2007-2008. Like, you could compare Libor to market borrowing rates and CDS and stuff, and people did, and noticed it was wrong. Also remember that Barclays, while they were manipulating Libor, were also emailing all their clients every day to remind them that Libor was being manipulated.
  • The effect/harm/liability of Libor manipulation has to be determined in expectation and if everyone knew it was being manipulated then they were presumably charging a higher spread to Libor when dealing with banks.

Geithner’s testimony won’t change my mind: now he has to look all grim about Libor manipulation, while back in the day he “treated it as a curiosity, or something akin to jaywalking, as opposed to highway robbery.”

But Tim Geithner wasn’t just a regulator when he ran the New York Fed; he was also a Libor user. So he gets to answer questions like this: Read more »

Tim Geithner Appeared To Consider ‘Beating The Living Shit Out Of’ TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky, Choose To Slay Him With Dramatic Hand Gestures Instead

By

Barofsky met with Geithner in the fall of 2009 to express his concern that the Treasury Department had made TARP unpopular by not being fully forthcoming about how TARP was being used, including not forcing banks disclose how they were spending TARP funds. Geithner got dramatic, [Barofksy writes in his new book, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street and said] ‘Neil, you think I don’t hear those criticisms? I hear them. And each one, they cut me,’ he said, pausing and then making an emphatic cutting motion with one hand as he said ‘like a knife.’” After a Geithner subordinate in the room, Herb Allison, expressed personal offense at Barofsky’s suggestion that Geithner has not been fully transparent, Barofsky responded, “I am not suggesting that the secretary has failed in transparency, I am stating it. Mr. Secretary, you’ve failed to be sufficiently transparent, and that is one of the reasons why people are so angry. But you can still fix it.” And that’s when the ticking time bomb that was Geithner erupted, telling Barofsky: ‘No one has ever made the banks disclose the type of shit that I made them disclose after the stress tests. No one! And now you’re saying that I haven’t been fucking transparent?’ Cooler heads prevailed, and the meeting went on, but Geithner never really came fully off the boil. “As we parried back and forth, Geithner repeatedly reached a pitch of anger, regaling me with detailed expletive-filled explanations that established my apparent idiocy. He would then calm himself down and give me a forced, almost demonic smile.” After the meeting was over, Barofsky and his deputy, Kevin Puvalowski, had a big laugh about it. ‘In all honesty, I think he was about to come out of his chair and beat the living shit out of you,’ Puvalowski remarked. [HuffPo]

  • 16 Jul 2012 at 11:45 AM

Post LiborGate, Area Investment Advisor Doesn’t Think He’s Being Extreme In Suggesting We Relaunch The Revolutionary War

By

As long ago as June 2008, New York Federal Reserve President Timothy F. Geithner was warning the Bank of England that letting bankers set the benchmark interest rate for global finance was open to abuse. Governor Mervyn King’s failure then to take greater responsibility for Libor now poses a new threat to London’s drive to rival New York in the battle for a larger share of a shrinking international financial industry. “As a company, we now avoid London,” said David Kotok, who manages about $2 billion as chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Sarasota, Florida. “It’s tarnished. Passing the buck to others, shirking responsibility and avoiding accountability characterizes the people at work there.” [Bloomberg via Heidi Moore]

  • 27 Apr 2012 at 5:56 PM

Experience The Collapse Of Lehman Brothers Again, For The First Time

By

How will you be spending your weekend? I know what I’ll be doing, which is reading all the Lehman bankruptcy documents. They’ve been online for a week or two and we’ve had some teasers today, covering how much all the big fish got paid and how much all the medium-sized fish in IBD got paid. Naturally those were the first things anyone noticed because, y’know, money. And money is important. But this industry isn’t just about money. It’s also about hope:

It’s about faith: Read more »

  • 24 Apr 2012 at 7:12 PM

Tim Geithner’s Father-In-Law Sounds Like A Delightful Drunk*

By

Make what you will of this somewhat bizarre story but our takeaway is that the Treasury Secretary’s FIL would make a great party guest and/or Benihana tablemate. Read more »

  • 17 Feb 2012 at 11:23 AM

Congressman Was This Close To Telling Tim Geithner He Was Cruisin’ For A Brusin’

By

“You can smile and laugh about it all you want,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) bristled at Mr. Geithner during a House Budget Committee hearing. Mr. Chaffetz then intoned he was getting sick of the Treasury secretary’s “silly little smirk.” To be sure, Mr. Geithner did have a smile on his face during parts of the hearing, particularly when he was interrupted by Republicans on the panel when they didn’t like his answers on deficit reduction. He even spent part of the hearing answering questions with his arms crossed. At one point, he suggested that Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R., Kan.) had an “adolescent perspective” on how the economy worked. [Washington Wire]

  • 25 Jan 2012 at 5:52 PM

Tim Geithner Still Under The Impression He Can Leave Washington Whenever He Pleases

By

Remember, back in June, when Tim Geithner said he was considering retiring from his post at the Treasury after the debt deal passed, telling friends that he was tired, needed a break and wanted to put family first (his wife and son live in Westchester, where the latter is finishing high school)? And the White House was all, “good one, buddy!” and “joked” about forcing him to wear an ankle monitoring bracelet before making clear in no uncertain terms that TG wasn’t going anywhere? Apparently Tim doesn’t.  Which would explain the laughable statement he made earlier today, vis-à-vis being allowed to go home any time soon: Read more »

Eliot Spitzer Is Having ‘Loads’ Of Fun Telling Other People How To Do Their Jobs

By

“You know what I would like to see?” Spitzer asked the crowd. “I’d like to see a petition with a hundred million signatures, submitted to the White House tomorrow morning, saying, ‘Give us a treasury secretary who understands reform.’ Bring Paul Volcker in. Bring in Joe Stiglitz. Bring in Paul Krugman. Bring in Robert Reich…Spitzer, who was booted from the network after the program failed to offset a ratings slump, told Capital on his way out the door that he has no plans to embark on another media venture anytime soon. “Right now I’m having loads of fun,” he said. [Capital NY]