[MozarkDawg]

When did the Sec. of the Treasury become a member of Congress? ‘Cause according to my reading of the Constitution, CONGRESS is the body which has the power to tax, the power to reduce same, not one or another of the members of the Cabinet.

[sefarkas]

The only time he came close to running a business where he'd have to please customers and make a payroll was the job he turned down with CitiBank.

Born 1961. Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates in Washington for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988 [Asian financial crises]. He went on to serve as an attaché at the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (1995–1996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (1996–1997), assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998).

He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Summers was his mentor, but other sources call him a Rubin protégé.

In October 2003 at age 42, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His salary in 2007 was $398,200. As President of the New York Fed, he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee. In 2006, he also became a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. In May 2007 he worked to reduce the capital required to run a bank. In November he rejected Sanford Weill's offer to take over as Citigroup's chief executive.

In March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns. In the same year, he played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG just two days after deciding not to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. According to some observers, Geithner severely damaged the U.S. economy