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Arnold Kling has a post on what he calls the Harvard-Goldman filter: The Harvard-Goldman filter works like this. 1. To get into a position of power, you have to pass through a filter. The easiest way to show that you can pass through the filter is to go to Harvard and then work for Goldman. 2. If you do not go to Harvard and work for Goldman, then you have to show that you can get along with people who did. 3. The best way to show that you can get along with people who pass the Harvard-Goldman filter is...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Plans from Wells Fargo & Co and Citigroup to repay taxpayer funds will put the U.S. government on track to reduce its bailout investments in banks by more than 75 percent, while earning a healthy profit for the U.S., U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Monday. "With the recent announcements on repayments, we are now on track to reduce TARP bank investments by more than 75 percent, while earning a healthy profit on that commitment," Geithner said in a statement after Wells Fargo announced it will repay the $25 billion it received from the government under...

Tough road for Rangel on tax pushBy Ian Swanson - 12/09/09 06:00 AM ET Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) wants to push a tax reform overhaul through Congress in 2010. The question is whether anyone will get behind the proposal offered by the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Democrats’ agenda for 2010 is already crowded with a number of priorities, and the looming election will have leaders carefully selecting what to take up. There’s also the question of the ethics investigations targeting Rangel, which have weakened the chairman of one of Congress’s most powerful panels. Rangel appears undeterred,...

Stanley Ann Dunham worked for Peter F. Geithner. The turbo-tax kids father Peter was the director of the Ford Foundation. Obama's mother Ann looked over the Ford micro finance program she was developing. Timothy spent most of his childhood in Zimbabwe,Zambia,India,Thailand and finished high school in Bangkok. To think Obama' father worked for shell oil and his step father worked for Mobil oil! Peter F Geithner was also inter-woven with Robert Rubin , Lawrence Summers and Bob Schrank who was the author of Growing up Radical and Red in the USA! 1989 Obama took a summer intern job with Sidney&Austin;...

Even Timmy is slowly realizing that the Administration will need to find a way to deflect Main Steet's anger at Goldman and keep it focused exclusively on Wall Street instead of equating it with Obama et al. The problem is - you make some very serious, tentacled enemies in the process. Geithner also flip flops on his prior position on the transaction tax. While before he was more opposed to the transaction tax than even Marla, his new "windsocked" position on the topic may now provide a challenge even to Nitric Oxide inhibitors. But here is the clincher for the...

I've been slack-jawed a couple of times during this debacle of an economic mess, but this has to take the cake: Here is the real stunner. A senior person at Treasury said to a small group of us that it is now official Treasury policy to extend and pretend on real estate loans. In other words, the policy statement from last week says, if you can make an analysis that says even if the current value is less than the loan, if you can do a spreadsheet that shows if you extend for 3-5 years, and if the economy gets...

I was on assignment in Singapore on Nov. 24 when gold hit an all-time high of $1,174 an ounce. That was fortuitous because Singapore is the home base of commodities guru Jim Rogers, creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index. Meantime, back in the U.S., reports were surfacing about growing discontent in the halls of Congress over the performance of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the possibility he might be replaced by JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon. When I rang up Rogers, he was his usual low-key self, with quiet opinions about the future of gold prices, commodities to...

I received this from friend who is former Goldman Sachs partner. Good read. BN ________________________________ FYI, For those of you who can stomach this, here you go. Here are some personal insights from an attendee (not me) at ULI Meeting in San Francisco November 2009 ===================== "This week I attended the Urban Land fall conference. ULI is the top real estate industry group in the world. All the most senior people in the industry. 1. Not one expert was willing to predict what things will look like in 3 years other than they think it will be better 2. One...

More details on the appalling bailout of AIG. [Neil Barofsky's report on the AIG bailout is] must reading for any taxpayer hoping to understand why the $182 billion “rescue” of what was once the world’s largest insurer still ranks as the most troubling episode of the financial disaster. And it couldn’t have come at a more pivotal moment... [T]he actions taken in the deal by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time, grow curiouser and curiouser.

As we have been reading the latest coverage on the AIG bailout from the SIGTARP report and the Treasury Secretary Geithner’s Congressional testimony, a nagging question remains unresolved: why did AIG get bailed out but the monoline bond insurers did not? . . . I hate to get sucked into the vampire squid line of thinking about Goldman, but the only explanation i can think of for why AIG got rescued and the monolines did not is because Goldman had significant exposure to AIG and did not have exposure to the monolines. When it became clear that AIG could face...

I have said before, I think it will be pretty difficult to replace Geithner, but now we have President Obama's "favorite banker" being named as a possible replacement. NyPo reports As support for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanes on Capitol Hill amid frustration with the Obama administration's handling of the economy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is emerging as a potential replacement. Sources tell The Post that a number of policy makers have begun mentioning Dimon as a successor to Geithner, whose standing in Washington has suffered because of the country's high unemployment rate, the weakness of the dollar, the...

Washington, D.C. – While chairing part of today’s (Thursday, Nov. 19) Joint Economic Committee hearing, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar questioned U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner about the Administration’s plans to reform the financial regulatory system. “When Wall Street gets a cold, Main Street catches pneumonia,” said Klobuchar. “Small businesses are the engines that drive job creation in this country, and they need better access to credit. I want to make sure small businesses can keep their doors open and start hiring again. My number one priority is jobs, jobs, jobs.” Last month, Klobuchar and 32 other Senators wrote to President...

What was expected to be a boring congressional hearing erupted into high drama yesterday as an unnerved Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner sparred with frustrated lawmakers calling for his head over his handling of the economy. Clearly rattled by a fusillade of attacks from Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee, the usually reserved Geithner lashed out, laying blame for the current economic mess at the feet of the GOP and rejecting suggestions that he resign. Republicans "gave this president an economy falling off the cliff," Geithner fired back at Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), one of the Treasury secretary's harshest critics...

Political frustration over the rescue of Wall Street and high unemployment erupted in the House Thursday, with one committee threatening to impose tighter scrutiny on the Federal Reserve and another trading verbal insults with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The House Financial Services Committee voted, 43-26, to approve a measure sponsored by Texas Republican Ron Paul, vociferously opposed by the Fed, that would direct the congressional Government Accountability Office to expand its audits of the Fed to include decisions about interest rates and lending to individual banks. The Fed says the provision threatens its ability to make monetary policy without political...

The criticism came largely from House Republicans, who have long been critics of the Treasury secretary. Mr. Geithner's job status doesn't appear to be in serious jeopardy and several Democrats at a congressional hearing leapt to his defense.

During his testimony today, two Republican Congressmen urged Tim Geithner to resign, or said he should be fired. The commentariat seemed shocked that something like this would come up during an official Congressional hearing. And yet, now they're discussing it on CNBC, as a serious question, which is exactly what the Congressmen hoped. It's like when that one Congressman screamed "you lie" during Obama's speech about healthcare. Everyone was scandalized, but it accomplished the goal of getting people to talk about whether or not illegal immigrants would be covered by new healthcare reforms (which is what the shout was in...

Echoing comments made by a Democratic lawmaker Wednesday night, two Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee today called for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to resign.

VIDEO Related thread Geithner rejects lawmaker request he resign http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2389925/posts

reasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rejected a request from a Republican lawmaker that he resign for his handling of the economy. In a heated exchange during a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, Rep. Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and the top House Republican on the panel, said Geithner had failed as the Obama administration's point-man on the economy. "Will you step down from your post,?" Brady asked. Geithner replied that he served at the pleasure of President Barack Obama. Geithner said he agreed "with almost nothing" that Brady had said.

"Too big to fail" meets "Just the right size to steal from the taxpayers." Sounds like a horror movie - and believe me, if you read this piece by Jill Schlessinger at CBS News' Econowatch, you will be sickened by this colossal boondoggle that not only cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars but actually enriched Geithner's Wall Street friends in the process - friends who had just themselves been bailed out by us: OK, so let's get this straight: the financial world is melting down, Uncle Sam had just saved the bankers' butts and now Tim Geithner the President...

Special Inspector General for TARP (aka "SIG TARP") Neil Barofsky said something we've all known for a while: the government gave away the farm when AIG failed. If you recall, AIG's failure meant that the companies on the other side of all of its contracts (counterparties) were going to be left holding the bag. Under normal cases of bankruptcy, the court would impose haircuts to the amount of money due to counterparties, but because AIG didn't actually declare bankruptcy, the counterparties claimed that they were owed 100 cents of every dollar. The only bank that even considered taking a haircut...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) could have suffered dramatic losses if the federal government had not intervened to prop up American International Group Inc (AIG.N), according to a government report. The report by the special inspector general for the government bailout program raises doubts about Goldman's previous claims that it was hedged against potential AIG losses. Last fall, as the financial services industry stood on the brink of collapse, the government stepped in with an unprecedented effort to rescue the system. AIG was among the companies that received billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury's Troubled...

When the New York Fed renegotiated its original $85 billion deal to bail out AIG last year, it "effectively" transferred tens of billions dollars of cash from the federal government directly into the coffers of the AIG’s counterparties, according to an audit by TARP Inspector General Neil M. Barofsky.

The government’s watchdog over the bank bailout program is criticizing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s handling of one of the most sensitive moments of last year’s financial meltdown, questioning decisions he made while heading up the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The new report criticizes the New York Fed’s decision in the fall of 2008 to bail out insurance giant AIG by covering its clients’ losses, sending tens of billions in taxpayer dollars to overseas banks.

Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, on Wednesday reiterated his belief in the importance of a strong dollar, ahead of the arrival in Asia of US President Barack Obama. “I believe deeply that it’s very important to the United States, to the economic health of the United States, that we maintain a strong dollar,” Mr Geithner told the Japanese press in Tokyo. The weakening of the dollar, which on Wednesday dropped to a 15-month low on a trade-weighted basis, has led to some concern over the future of the dollar as the central currency in the global economy. “We bear a...

Rarely does a single piece of mail cause one's heart to flutter, face to flush and knees to buckle. But, then again, rarely does a piece of mail arrive with the dreaded return address: Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service That's the "Welcome Home" that greeted me this past Tuesday as I dragged myself through the front door after a rough day of earning a living, playing golf and ferrying adolescent infants from one suburban soiree to another. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I owed our esteemed and infallible federal government... $11,589.22! Holy smoke. What did I...

A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system was a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs paid themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they didn't have to customers who couldn't pay back the loans.

A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system is a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs pay themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they don't have to customers who can't pay back the loans. In those dark days between the fall of Lehman Brothers and before the presidential election, we were often carried through that time by the small glimmer of hope that at least we would soon have a new leader who would hopefully fix this mess and punish those responsible. Video...

Video at site We had professor William Black on TechTicker this morning. A former regulator who handled the S&L resolution, Prof. Black remains appalled at how this latest round of bailouts has been handled. Case in point? CIT Group. Once again, the white knight who stepped in to save the company--the U.S. taxpayer--gets completely hosed. It didn't have to be this way, says Prof. Black. And the man responsible is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Peter Gorenstein: Another one of the nation's largest lenders has filed for bankruptcy. On the brink for months, CIT filed for Chapter 11 protection on Sunday....

America's Got Talent! Contestant 1: Timothy Geithner going on Meet The Democrats (aka Meet The Press) to explain that the stimulus is working. Wow... that's got to be harder than riding a unicycle while spinning plates on a pole... Contestant 2: Valerie Jarrett on This Week with George Stephanopoulos - her task was to explain how Obama has made good on building unity, and how his health care plan has been bipartisan. Wow. Selling that would be like trying to argue that Bette Midler was the greatest soul singer of the 20th century... Contestant 3: Obama himself getting his photo...

Asked repeatedly on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether this means taxes will rise, Geithner avoided giving specifics.

Geithner: The Deficit Is Gigantic, But We'll Deal With It Another Time Joe WeisenthalNov. 1, 2009, 2:35 PM On Meet The Press, Tim Geithner acknowledged the monster deficit, and said it had to be dealth with... but that was really a problem to be solved at some point down the road. ---- AP: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledges the federal budget deficit is too high, but that the priorities now are economic growth and job creation. Asked repeatedly on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether this means taxes will rise, Geithner avoided giving specifics. He did say President Barack Obama is...

The Talk Shows Sunday, November 1st, 2009 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio talk show host.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; David Plouffe, former Obama presidential campaign manager; author Jon Krakauer.FACE THE NATION (CBS): White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.THIS WEEK (ABC): White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio; Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.

WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the economic recovery "could be a little choppy" and it's going to take a while. Geithner told NBC's "Meet the Press" that bringing back jobs and confidence of investors will be the real test of recovery. He declined to say whether the recession is over, saying economist will figure that out years from now.

When the historians finally finish sorting through the appalling decisions that have been made in the past two years, this one will probably be at the top of the heap. Last fall, as AIG began to realize how screwed it was, it started negotiating with the counterparties to all the credit default swaps it had written. One of the AIG's goals was to persuade these counterparties- These sorts of negotiations are exactly what should happen when a company gets in trouble. It goes to its creditors and says, look, we can't pay you everything, so here's your choice: Take something,...

The Internal Revenue Service will be more aggressive in collecting back taxes and prosecuting Americans accused of tax evasion, according to the new Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. The Internal Revenue Service, one of the Treasury Department’s agencies, claims that billions of dollars in income tax assessments were not paid by Americans. If not collected, annual unpaid taxes keep accumulating each year along with penalty and interest charges to create an inventory of “tax debts,” which approached $300 billion at the end of fiscal year 2007. IRS has a complex process to collect unpaid tax debts by contacting taxpayers through notices,...

Amid the recent financial crisis, the United States made some progress towards solving its biggest economic problem of recent years: the lack of US savings. Regrettably, in the latest figures, the beginnings of economic recovery have brought backsliding, with the savings rate dropping back to 4.3% from 6%. Without more savings, as global liquidity declines, the United States will quickly become a capital-starved economy, losing investment to capital surplus countries where savings are plentiful. The difficult questions are: what caused the savings decline, and what can be done to reverse it? During the halcyon years of the 1950s and 1960s,...

B has an interesting story up on the AIG derivative "payoff" mess I've repeatedly written about: Beginning late in the week of Nov. 3, the New York Fed, led by President Timothy Geithner, took over negotiations with the banks from AIG, together with the Treasury Department and Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s Federal Reserve. Geithner’s team circulated a draft term sheet outlining how the New York Fed wanted to deal with the swaps -- insurance-like contracts that backed soured collateralized-debt obligations. .... Part of a sentence in the document was crossed out. It contained a blank space that was intended to...

 Glenn Beck got this from one of his economic "deep throats" who knows the way the world works This was on today's show  Fresh from Glenn Beck show a very good explanation of economic affairsUnder Jimmy Carter the money supply was jacked up 13% to stimulate the economyStagflation set in so Paul Volcker tightened up the money supply by jacking up rates to 20%So 20% cured 13%This time around the money supply has been increased by 130%The Fed is loaning banks and Wall Street money at essentially 0% interestThe Vast majority of this money is retained and not lent out...

When our petitions could not be ignored they were ridiculed. If we continue to rally will they someday consider our demands? If half or more of our productive efforts are used to sustain those who enslave us we may die of exhaustion while fighting against our own strength. Is it time to really throw tea into the harbor yet? There may be cost effective ways to do this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZDZzbUxrnM If we are going to restore our Constitution there is a long struggle ahead. LIMIT GOVERNMENT it can not be trusted! LIMIT GOVERNMENT limit the Change that tyrants can Hope for!...

In the summer of 2008, two months before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Richard S. Fuld Jr., the firm's chairman, was continuing his desperate efforts to find a lifeline. They had begun in March, shortly after the demise of Bear Stearns, when Mr. Fuld called the legendary investor Warren E. Buffett seeking a capital infusion, to no avail. Lehman had raised money elsewhere, but that didn't help for long, and its condition again was worsening.Adapted from "Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — And Themselves." The book, being published Tuesday by...

Congress put American taxpayers on the hook for $700 billion last year when it approved the massive bailout to paper over the imprudent lending decisions of nine Wall Street giants: Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, State Street and the Bank of NY Mellon. The bailout was essential to save the nation from a complete economic meltdown. Or so insisted President George W. Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. One year later, however, a little-noted report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel are never far from each other’s side, according to detailed daily schedules obtained by The Wall Street Journal Thursday through a Freedom of Information Act request. From January to July, Geithner and Emanuel met in person, spoke on the phone, or left messages for each other at least 108 times—interactions that don’t include broader meetings with White House officials or informal contacts such as hallway chats. Contact between the two senior administration officials picked up after Feb. 10, the day Geithner delivered a widely panned speech outlining his...

Government regulators threatened to remove top Bank of America executives in December if they didn't acquire Merrill Lynch, but also agreed to provide taxpayer funds to compensate for Merrill's poor performance, according to company records obtained by The Washington Times. The documents -- e-mails between bank executives and their outside lawyers as well as board-meeting talking points prepared for then-Chief Executive Ken Lewis -- indicate that former Treasury Secretary Henry Mr. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke promised to give the bank taxpayer bailout funds to compensate them for Merrill's poor performance. Summaries written by the...

Famed short-seller David Einhorn is bullish on gold because he's bearish on Obama. Members of President Obama's prized economic team, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, are "quintessential short-term decision makers," Einhorn said, explaining his sudden fondness for gold. Watching Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and White House economic advisor Larry Summers on television recently, "my instinct was to short the dollar," Einhorn joked at the Value Investing Congress, a star-studded investment conference held in Midtown. Instead, he decided to invest in gold, even though futures hit a record price of $1,072 an ounce last week.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States must live within its means once its economy recovers if it is to preserve global confidence in the U.S. dollar's status, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Friday. The comments came as the Obama administration reported a record U.S. budget deficit for the fiscal year ended September of $1.4 trillion. At 10 percent of gross domestic product, it was the biggest U.S. fiscal shortfall since World War Two.

In unprepared remarks given at a Wall Street conference hosted by The Economist magazine yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner delivered this eye-brow-raising comment: “We’ve got unsustainable deficits over a five- to 10-year window.” Economists have also projected this outsized deficit spending—a $3.6 tn budget, a $787 bn stimulus plan, and health reform veering towards $1 tn over a period of years--is putting the country on track to join Zimbabwe, Italy, and Japan when it comes to rising debt-to-GDP ratios. Geithner also said the US economy is slowly recovering, but the markets should not expect a V-shaped recovery, as the healing...

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is trying to lead the U.S. economy out of its doldrums with - figuratively - one arm tied behind his back: Almost nine months after the Obama administration took power, more than half of the 33 highest-level Treasury Department posts are still vacant. The department oversees the $787 billion economic stimulus program, the $700 billion bank-bailout program and the administration's coordination with other nations on the global financial crisis. The department also has taken an active role in a legislative push to overhaul financial regulation - another Obama priority.

Story at link below. Bloomberg does not allow posts on FR.

New revelations about Tim Geithner’s phone records show an appallingly small Wall Street circle. With a probe likely, Simon Johnson says the Treasury secretary needs a bailout—from Larry Summers.