Courtesy of Pam Martens.
The Non Profit Organization, Code Pink, Appeared on Multiple Occasions Holding Protest Signs Behind Geithner as he Appeared Before Congress to Explain the Massive Bailouts of the Banks
Tim Geithner, former head of the New York Fed during the lead up to the Wall Street melt down, then Secretary of the Treasury in President Obama’s first term, is undergoing his own version of a big bank stress test: does he have the capital to survive the storm he has stirred up with his new, revisionist history book, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.
Geithner’s book has barely made it to the bookstore shelves (it’s slated for official release today) and already he’s been called a liar by R. Glenn Hubbard, Dean of the Columbia Business School; Geithner is effectively calling author Ron Suskind a liar in the book; and the book’s attack on Neil Barofsky, former Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has warranted a strong response from Barofsky where he says he doesn’t believe former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson made the remarks that Geithner has attributed to him against Barofsky.
Politico’s MJ Lee explains the ruckus between Hubbard and Geithner. Hubbard was the head of the Council of Economic Advisers during the presidency of George W. Bush and advisor to Mitt Romney during his 2012 campaign. Geithner says in the book that Hubbard told him “Well, of course we have to raise taxes — we just can’t say that now.” Hubbard told Politico this statement “just happens to be a lie.”
Geithner’s looming dispute with Ron Suskind stems from Confidence Men, a book by Suskind published in 2011. The book portrays Geithner as ignoring a directive from President Obama to wind down the teetering behemoth, Citigroup. Instead, Geithner approved the massive bailout package to the insolvent company. In Stress Test, Geithner says no such order ever came from the President, writing that the President “never told me to pursue that path.”
To determine just who is telling the truth in the Suskind-Geithner version of the Citigroup saga, our previous review of Geithner’s appointment calendars for 2007 and 2008 when he was Citigroup’s regulator at the New York Fed might prove instructive. During 2007 and 2008, as Citigroup entered a death spiral resulting from a decade of obscene executive pay, off balance sheet debt, toxic assets and mismanagement, Geithner hobnobbed with Citigroup executives, holding 29 breakfasts, lunches, dinners and other meetings, including one very odd luncheon with Citigroup’s former Chairman and CEO, Sandy Weill. As we previously reported:
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