Tag Archives: Tim Geithner

By Simon Johnson

In a major speech earlier this week to an American Bankers Association conference, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out his view of what went wrong in the financial sector prior to 2008, how the crisis was handled 2008-10, and what is now needed with regard to implementation of reforms.  As chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the only senior member of President Obama’s original economic team remaining in place, Mr. Geithner’s influence with regard to the banking system is second to none.

Unfortunately, there are three major mistakes in Mr. Geithner’s speech: his history is completely wrong; his logic is deeply flawed; and his interpretation of the Dodd-Frank reform does not mesh with the legal facts regarding how the failure of a global megabank could be handled.  Added together, this suggests one of our most powerful policymakers is headed very much in the wrong direction. Continue reading →

By Simon Johnson.  This post comprises the first few paragraphs of a column now running at Project Syndicate: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/johnson17/English

In a recent interview, United States Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out his view of the nature of world economic growth and the role of the US financial sector. It is a deeply disturbing vision, one that amounts to a huge, uninformed gamble with the future of the American economy – and that suggests that Geithner remains the senior public official worldwide who is most in thrall to the self-serving ideology of big banks.

Geithner argues that the world will now experience a major “financial deepening,” owing to growing demand in emerging markets for financial products and services. He is thinking, of course, of “middle-income” countries like India, China, and Brazil. And he is right to emphasize that all have made terrific progress and now offer great opportunities for the rising middle class, which wants to accumulate savings, borrow more easily (for productive investment, home purchases, education, etc), and, more generally, smooth out consumption.

But then Geithner takes a leap. He wants US banks to take the lead in these countries’ financial development….(column continues at Project Syndicate.)

By Simon Johnson

Speaking Thursday morning on the Today show, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner insisted on two points:

1. If the bank rescue of 2008-09 had been handled in any other way – for example, being tougher on bankers – the costs to the real economy would have been substantially higher. 

“again, what was the choice the president had to make? He had to decide whether he was gonna act to fix [the banking system] or stand back because it might be more popular not to have to do that kind of stuff, and that would have been calamitous for the American economy, much, much worse than what we went through already.”

2. The reform legislation currently before Congress would end all concerns regarding Too Big To Fail in the future. 

“The president’s not gonna sign a bill that doesn’t have strong enough teeth.”

In 13 Bankers, we disagree strongly with point #1 (see this excerpt) and find point #2 so at odds with reality that it is scary.  Friday morning, also on the Today Show, I have a brief opportunity to suggest a different narrative. Continue reading →

The details of the new White House banking policy are somewhat vague and in places borderline incoherent – e.g., what exactly does “The President’s proposal will place broader limits on the excessive growth of the market share of liabilities at the largest financial firms…” mean (from point 2 in yesterday’s short and poorly edited statement)?

And the size restrictions currently in pencil on the back on an envelope near the president’s desk are almost certainly too lenient; the goal should not be a return to the status quo of 2007 or thereabouts - the clock must be rolled back much further and “too big to fail” completely removed from the financial map.

But the general principle behind our ”Volcker Rule” is clear.  Here’s what President Obama said, “Banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest, or sponsor hedge funds, private equity funds, or proprietary trading operations for their own profit, unrelated to serving their customers.”

Whatever you think of that notion or the exact wording, this clearly implies that banks will get smaller.  Secretary Geithner apparently does not get this (transcript). Continue reading →

Yesterday Simon pointed out the AP story highlighting Tim Geithner’s many contacts with a few key Wall Street executives — primarily Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Vikram Pandit, and Richard Parsons — while leading the government’s rescue efforts as Treasury secretary. It’s certainly useful for the nation’s top economic official to talk to people in the banking industry, and it’s also useful for him to talk to banks that are being bailed out by the government. But the AP story did come up with a few important distinctions. Geithner talked to these Wall Street executives more than the key people in Congress — Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd — that he needs to pass his regulatory reform plan. And he talked to them much more than to, say, Bank of America, which is equally big and equally in debt to the government. So to be clear, Geithner is talking to these people more than dictated by the requirements of his job (or he’s not talking to Ken Lewis enough).

Still, you could say, what’s wrong with that? Can’t Tim Geithner talk to whomever he wants to talk to?

Continue reading →