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Administration to Tea Parties: We're on Your Side FOXNews.com Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in an interview Sunday, when asked about the Tea Party protests, that the Obama administration is paying more attention to the deficit than the Bush administration did.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. unemployment rate, currently at 9.7%, will remain “unacceptably high” for some time to come, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday. “The unemployment rate is still terribly high and it’s going to stay unacceptably high for a long period of time,” Mr. Geithner said on NBC’s “Today” Show.

The worst is over! Thank Obama and the new Marxism!!

WASHINGTON (AP) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (GYT'-nur) says the economy is growing faster than the Obama administration expected. He tells NBC's "Meet the Press" that the country is on the way to sustained job creation. But he acknowledges that unemployment may remain high, close to 10 percent. Geithner says there's more confidence in the business world, and he says the private sector is growing. He also says people are spending more. He said he sees encouraging signs that should make Americans confident the country will emerge stronger.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday it is a "critical moment" for a financial regulatory overhaul and said he believed a legislative agreement was close. Geithner, briefing reporters at the White House after President Barack Obama met congressional leaders, also said the U.S. economy was "recovering faster than expected" and emerging from recession faster than other global economies. Geithner spoke mostly about the financial regulation debate. "I think it's a critical moment for reform, a promising moment, a lot of hard work, a lot of progress," he said. Rejecting a key Republican argument, Geithner said Obama...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday the Obama administration will push China forcefully to open its markets and maintain fair trading rules. Interviewed during an appearance before a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Geithner repeated that it was important for China to move toward a flexible currency rate regime and added that he felt Beijing understands it was in that nation's own interest to do so. "We have an enormously productive, beneficial relationship with China today," he said. "It's hugely important to companies large and small across the country." But he said it...

It will be a temple of taxes, a Tax Mahal, as the headline puts it. What a fitting symbol for a government run amok, and in a perfect setting too - the town of Andover, where last year 626 streetlights were turned off because the town couldn’t afford them anymore. But now the Feds spend $92 million on the same IRS facility where they just eliminated 1,400 jobs. The Internal Revenue Service - all you need to know about Obamacare is that it will create not one single new physician or health-care provider, but it will require hiring new IRS...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will press Vice Premier Wang Qishan on China's exchange-rate policy in Beijing Thursday, the latest signal the U.S. and China are trying to resolve the touchy issue of the Chinese currency's value. In his visit, announced unexpectedly on Wednesday, Mr. Geithner is expected to outline the U.S. rationale for why China should allow its currency, the yuan, to rise, according to U.S. government officials. The U.S. doesn't expect to come out of Beijing with an explicit agreement on the currency, officials said. But they added there are "encouraging" signs the Chinese are preparing to let the...

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes: 1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against...

WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) - The Internal Revenue Service could tap individual tax returns to collect fines against people who fail to buy health insurance as required under recently enacted healthcare legislation, the U.S. tax commissioner said on Monday. Most individuals are required to get health insurance under the new law, or face penalties that would be phased in over time. By 2016, people without coverage could see fines of 2 percent of their income. Subsidies would help poorer people buy coverage, and states would set up exchanges to allow individuals and small groups shop for insurance. People who do...

A proposal on which U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has been working for much of the last decade is getting close to reality: an audit-the-Federal Reserve requirement that has been approved in the U.S. House and is pending in the Senate as an amendment to a piece of financial reform legislation. "They're still negotiating," said a spokeswoman for the congressman's office. "We're very hopeful that it's going to be included, maybe ... by the end of next week." She told WND that Paul would be pleased to have it pass as it stands. The plan, now pending before the Senate...

The NY Fed, and likely Geithner himself, undermined, perhaps even violated, laws designed to protect investors and markets. Lots of chatter on the web pointing fingers at Geithner. Keep in mind, that Geithner ran Lehman through 3 "stress tests" prior to bankruptcy; all of which Lehman failed, and yet, nothing was done. Anton R. Valukas--the examiner who wrote the 2,200 page investigative-report which was released on Thursday-- has provided plenty of information detailing Lehman's “materially misleading” accounting and “actionable balance sheet manipulation.”

Now that Citigroup and AIG are rolling in the bucks, GMAC is looking like the most egregious zombie bank of them all. A report released Thursday questions the wisdom of the government's decision to spend $17 billion propping up the money-losing maker of car and home loans. Facebook Digg Twitter Buzz Up! Email Print Comment on this story Elizabeth Warren's TARP oversight panel questions Treasury's investment in GMAC. The report, released by the Congressional Oversight Panel, noted that the White House thinks taxpayers will lose at least $6 billion on the GMAC bailout. Two members of the panel projected that...

Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, has delivered a blunt warning to the European Commission that its plans to regulate the hedge fund and private equity industries could cause a transatlantic rift by discriminating against US groups. A letter sent by Mr Geithner this month to Michel Barnier, Europe’s internal market commissioner, makes it clear that the European Union is heading for a clash with Washington if it pushes ahead with what the US – and Britain – fear could be a protectionist law. The debate over the shape of future financial regulation has reached a critical point in Brussels. Diplomats...

The following is based on a report by Cliff Kincaid for Accuracy in Media. The New York Times is quoting a spokesman for George Soros as saying that the well-known hedge fund operator is guilty of no wrong-doing in connection with the financial upheaval currently affecting Greece and Europe as a whole. But Zubi Diamond, author of the powerful new book, Wizards of Wall Street, says the agenda of Soros and other short sellers is clear. Their purpose, he says, is “to loot America and any foreign country which invested in America. Greece was one of them. Iceland was ravaged...

Ethics: There's a 900-pound elephant in the room in Washington named Corruption. The media don't seem to have noticed it's there — because the pachyderm is actually a donkey. When Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., was exposed in the fall of 2006 sending sleazy text messages to male teenage congressional pages, the establishment press made sure it cast a heavy shadow on the entire Republican establishment. Again and again it was noted that then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other congressional GOP leaders obviously knew about Foley but did little or nothing. Where are they now that Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., is...

While everyone, including Congress, the media, and the public, have focused on AIG's $100-million bonus payments to key employees, and most recently on AIG's stealth payments to counterparties like Chase and the French giant Société Générale -- the latter made worse by the fact that it was the Federal Reserve (FED) that wanted to keep these payments hidden from public view -- the problem with the AIG bailout is much deeper and more fundamental. Just about everyone has had something to say about this bailout -- mostly that it was an ugly but necessary step to stave off a domino...

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and his department have been sued by Judicial Watch as a result of the government's abject failure to abide by the law, specifically the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), concerning the Toxic Assets Relief Program and Obama administration "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg. Last November, Judidial Watch submitted an FOIA request multiple documents concerning meetings involving Feinberg, special master for executive compensation under TARP; AIG Chairman Robert Benmosche, and New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley. As the Obama administration’s “pay czar,” Feinberg is responsible for setting compensation guidelines for the seven largest firms, including AIG,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration will wait until 2011 to propose an overhaul of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday, arguing that he wanted to put some distance between a new system and what he called "the worst housing crisis in generations." Geithner also told lawmakers the administration had no intention of including the two entities in the federal budget, even though they were taken over by the government in 2008 as they faced mounting losses from mortgage defaults.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., this morning asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner how much the government’s bailout of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) would add to the deficit if that bailout was “consolidated” into the federal budget. (At present, the Obama Administration keeps it “off budget.”) Here’s Geithner’s answer: I think the CBO answer would be — this is a matter for accountants — is that it would be no impact on the deficit. That doesn’t appear to be what CBO said: