“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]
Tim Geithner
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Eliot Spitzer Is Having ‘Loads’ Of Fun Telling Other People How To Do Their Jobs
By Bess Levin
TG is calling for a little teamwork. Read more »
As we mentioned two seconds ago, today is Tim Geithner’s birthday, and a big one at that. The Treasury Secretary turns 50, and on a day when he’s away from his family, being held against his will, watching the market drive off a cliff, a drop for which he’ll probably be blamed, this is what his staff got him: Read more »
As you may have heard, Standard and Poor’s knocked the US’s debt down to double-A plus from triple-A Friday evening. Several hours before it was made official, the ratings agency was notified their team had made some calculation errors but chose to say “fuck it, on with the downgrade.” This made a whole bunch of people very upset, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who commented S&P demonstrated “really terrible judgement, handled themselves poorly, showed a stunning lack of knowledge about basic US fiscal budget math, and…came to exactly the wrong conclusion” and Warren Buffett, who shared that he could not give less of a rat’s ass what S&P thinks, that he’s “not changing his mind about Treasurys based on the downgrade,” that “if anything, it may change my opinion on S&P,” and that the United States’s debt is like that of the first buxon milkmaid he laid his eyes on 70 years ago today- her tits may be down on the ground now but they’ll always be triple-A rated in his mind and that’s all that matters.
A slightly different reaction came from PIMCO CEO Bill Gross. He loved the downgrade and if we’re being really honest? It earned S&P some respect in his eyes, ’cause it showed the ratings agency has balls. Read more »
President Barack Obama’s senior advisers are confident Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner will remain in his job even though he hasn’t made his intentions public, an administration official said. Geithner met recently with Vice President Joe Biden and laid out his reasons for wanting to leave the post. Biden outlined why it was vital that Geithner remain, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcement has been made. [Bloomberg, earlier]
The White House Doesn’t Care That Tim Geithner Has A Family And A Mortgage In Larchmont, New York
By Bess Levin
At the end of June, Tim Geithner said that he was considering leaving his post at the Treasury after the debt deal past, telling friends that he’s tired, needs a break, and wants to put family first (his wife and son are living in Westchester again so that young Geithner can finish high school there). TG’s work pals were a bit too busy to say anything at the time, but now that the whole debt situation is behind us, they’ve begun to let him know he’s not going anywhere.
Obama, for one, doesn’t want to lose his office buddy, while White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley doesn’t want to deal with a confirmation battle that would take place should Geithner need to be replaced, which is why he “jokingly” tells Tim to fuck off and gestures towards his crotch when the topic of resignation comes up. Read more »
In New York this week, John Heileman repeats reports that Tim Geithner wants to resign as Treasury Secretary this year after the debt ceiling talks are resolved, and kind of surprisingly gives the nod to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg as the most likely successor, adding to talk of her shortlisting from earlier this month. His logic is here, and includes Sandberg’s growing national reputation (especially after this week’s New Yorker profile), her history as chief of staff to Larry Summers at Treasury, and her appeal to the business community without any Wall Street/GE-doesn’t-pay-taxes baggage for the, um, anti-business community.
It’s hard to argue with Sandberg’s timing so far – she joined Google pre-IPO, cashed out after their 2004 IPO, and jumped to Facebook in 2008. So the next sensible new-media thingy would seem to be Twitter, and the Obama administration has that covered as well. Read more »
Question: What are things Jim Rogers thinks sucks? Read more »
Corzine…has attended secret meetings with the president and has been working on Obama’s 2012 campaign for months, The Post has learned. And, like any good executive, Corzine is looking out for his own bottom line. Success could resuscitate his political career with a top post — such as treasury secretary or a key ambassadorship — if there is a second Obama term. Obama campaigned heavily for Corzine in his failed re-election bid, calling him “our Wall Street guy.” [NYP via BI]
“Around two-thirds of recent softness in the U.S. economy can be attributed to temporary factors such as higher energy costs and Japan’s earthquake,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNBC on Friday. “Most people say you can attribute about two thirds of the slow down relative to expectations to those factors. Not all of it,” he said. [CNBC]
Everybody be cool. Read more »
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