A person familiar with his thinking said among the reasons was that Geithner specifically did not want to work for a company that he either directly or indirectly regulated at the Treasury or the Fed. He is said to have been concerned with worsening the perception of mistrust that many Americans feel toward government and Wall Street. [CNBC]
As you may have heard, Obama is apparently close to nominating Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary, giving Tim Geithner his late Christmas wish: a one-way ticket outta there. And while he's previously said to have no interest in writing about his time in Washington (and at the NY Fed before that), friends o' TG claim that his plan for the next year or so involve "a round of 'detox' and writing a book." Obviously we're still very far off from anything concrete but publishers will undoubtedly be banging down his door in no time and when they do, it might be nice to at least have a title to wet their palates. While Geithner packs his bags, let's do him a solid and come up with some options. The year spent sunning himself off the coast of Ko Samui (or puttering around Larchmont, or taking a job with the least amount of responsibility possible, whatever the detox entails) will presumably do wonders to take the edge of the last 48 months but if he's still in an angsty phase by the time he sits down to bang out his story, perhaps one of the following would work?
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. Food critic Albert Sonnenfeld, whose daughter, Carole, is wed to the country’s top money man, stunned strangers at Bar Boulud Thursday night when he claimed President Obama’s nomination of Dartmouth College president Dr. Jim Yong Kim to head the World Bank was part of a plan to allow Geithner to take over the Ivy League school’s top post...“That’s why Obama nominated [Kim] for the World Bank — so that there’d be an opening,” Sonnenfeld claimed to a dinner companion at the eatery’s communal table. Seated with five other couples he didn’t know, Sonnenfeld indiscreetly claimed Geithner has since changed his mind. “They offered him the presidency of Dartmouth. But now he doesn’t want it,” said the gabby granddad. “He wants something else...Sonnenfeld also let slip that Carole Geithner “can’t wait to get out” of DC because “she has to hold her nose and entertain all these Republicans.” Sonnenfeld added, according to the witness, “Some of them she actually liked, like Jim Bunning from Kentucky. But now he’s gone. Can you imagine having to entertain John Boehner and his wife, with his fake tan?” Geithner spokesman Anthony Coley told us, “Interesting theory about Dartmouth, but to paraphrase Kissinger: ‘It has the disadvantage of being made up.'" [NYP] *It's not actually clear if he was drinking. If this is how he is sans sauce, all the better.