According to an Associated Press story on Ron Suskind’s new book, “Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and The Education of A President,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is to blame for the White House’s failure to get tough with Wall Street. The AP reports:
The book states Geithner and the Treasury Department ignored a March 2009 order to consider dissolving banking giant Citigroup while continuing stress tests on banks, which were burdened with toxic mortgage assets.
In the book, Obama does not deny Suskind’s account, but does not reveal what he told Geithner when he found out. “Agitated may be too strong a word,” Suskind quotes Obama as saying. Obama says later in the book that he was trying to be decisive but “the speed with which the bureaucracy could exercise my decision was slower than I wanted.”
Geithner says in the book that he did not recall that Obama was mad at him about the Citigroup decision and rejected allegations contained in White House documents that his department had been slow to enact the president’s plans.
“I don’t slow walk the president on anything,” Geithner told Suskind.
In the book, Obama does not deny Suskind’s account, but does not reveal what he told Geithner when he found out. “Agitated may be too strong a word,” Suskind quotes Obama as saying. Obama says later in the book that he was trying to be decisive but “the speed with which the bureaucracy could exercise my decision was slower than I wanted.”
Geithner says in the book that he did not recall that Obama was mad at him about the Citigroup decision and rejected allegations contained in White House documents that his department had been slow to enact the president’s plans.
“I don’t slow walk the president on anything,” Geithner told Suskind.
Hard to see how Obama comes out looking good either way here. Either Obama told Geithner to break up Citigroup, Geithner ignored him, and Obama did nothing; or the whole story is a farce and some forces in the White House are trying to make a villian out of Geithner to protect Obama. So far, those Obama supporters most upset about the bailouts are not buying the Geithner-did-it theory. Firedoglake‘s David Dayen writes:
Say this is true. Say that the President ordered the Treasury Department to consider a dissolution of Citigroup – which was majorly sick at the time – and Treasury blew it off. Now remember that the cabinet secretary responsible for ignoring that direct order is still in the cabinet. This sounds completely impossible to me. Unless the direct order was a minor thing, a CYA plan in case things got much worse at Citi. Obama is saying here that “agitated may be too strong a word” for his reaction to the lack of planning.
So either a) this didn’t happen, b) Obama has no problem with insubordination or c) the consideration of a plan wasn’t such a big deal in the scheme of things. And the fact that Geithner is still there points to (c). In fact, Geithner is still pushing bailout plans, this time in Europe, wanting them to set up a credit facility to leverage private money.
So either a) this didn’t happen, b) Obama has no problem with insubordination or c) the consideration of a plan wasn’t such a big deal in the scheme of things. And the fact that Geithner is still there points to (c). In fact, Geithner is still pushing bailout plans, this time in Europe, wanting them to set up a credit facility to leverage private money.
