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WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Sunday refuted charges President Barack Obama planned to use the financial bailout of troubled US firms to increase the government's stake in the US economy. "President Obama adopted a strategy designed to get the government out of the private sector as quickly as possible," Geithner wrote in an op-ed piece published by The Washington Post. The comments came after the Troubled Asset Relief Program expired last week. TARP had at one point called for 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money to be handed over to Wall Street institutions to shore them...

(This is presently front page at Yahoo) The price to taxpayers of the bailouts and financial rescue of 2008 and 2009 continues to fall sharply. In figures to be released later today, the Treasury Department will report that the final net cost of the TARP is expected to be about $50 billion,Yahoo! Finance has learned. Add in expected returns from Treasury's interest in insurance company AIG, and the final net cost will be closer to $30 billion. The news of the shrunken cost, which comes on the two-year anniversary of the legislation that created TARP, represents a dramatic improvement. It...

Larry Kudlow just insisted on a rumor we've heard several times: Michael Bloomberg is going to be treasury secretary. Kudlow says he heard from "deep insiders" that the pick has been made and it's Bloomberg.

Since Tim Geithner did not predict the economic crisis, Nassim Taleb has no interest in listening to him talk about it now. The author of The Black Swan, a book about risk and probability theory, told National Journal's Matthew Cooper that he did not listen to Geithner, who preceded him at the Washington Ideas Forum.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (L) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speak about Iran from the State Department in Washington September 29, 2010.

In a year when angry voters are demanding a reduced government role in the economy, it is remarkable that most of the ideas for supplanting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are just imaginative ways of keeping government in the business of housing finance. While the Obama administration has not yet outlined its own proposal, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has already signaled that the government will continue to have a role. This is pretty astonishing. One would think that something might have been learned from the recent past, when two New Deal ideas for government housing support — the savings and...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday gave a full-throated defense of the Troubled Asset Relief Program — saying Republican leaders will eventually be "proud" of it. In a speech that served as parting words for Herb Allison, who is leaving his post as head of the Office of Financial Stability, Geithner declared that lawmakers would embrace the program in time. “TARP is now regarded by many experts as one of the most effective emergency programs in financial history,” Geithner said. TARP was “absolutely instrumental in keeping our nation out of a second Great Depression. That is a major achievement.” Geithner...

An adviser to China's central bank has rebuffed criticism from the US over Beijing's exchange rate policy. In a speech in Beijing, Li Daokui said China "will not appreciate the yuan solely because of external pressure". His comments follow strong criticism in America that the yuan is significantly undervalued, damaging US exports. (Snip) China denies keeping its currency artificially cheap, and has warned against foreign pressure over what Beijing regards as an internal matter.

Tim Geithner Warns: The US Is At Risk Of A 1930s Repeat Joe Weisenthal Sep. 12, 2010, 9:11 PM If the government become paralyzed -- as is arguably the case already, and is clearly a serious risk should the GOP take over -- the US risks a 1930s-like scenario. At least according to Tim Geithner. That's the standout quote from an interview in the WSJ: [The] typical error most countries make coming out of a financial crisis is they shift too quickly to premature restraint. You saw that in the United States in the 30s, you saw that in Japan...

A proposed special-interest tax break for plaintiffs' lawyers would add billions of dollars in federal spending and jack up costs to consumers. It's nothing more than a direct subsidy from taxpayers to ambulance chasers. That was the message of a strongly worded letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner from the American Medical Association, 42 national medical groups representing specialties such as radiology, cardiology and gastroenterology, and the medical associations of 47 states and the District of Columbia. The Treasury is considering an administrative ruling - as an end run around Congress - that would allow trial lawyers to take...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is like the Angelina Jolie to President Obama's Brad Pitt. So unpopular is he, every time the president is seen with another economically savvy individual, people start to get excited that the pair might finally be breaking up. So it follows that, after Mayor Bloomberg told reporters that he and Obama spent much of their intimate golf session in Martha's Vineyard last week discussing the economy, "Page Six" says they're hearing "whispers" that the president asked the mayor about taking over as Treasury secretary. "It's been the focus of a lot of discussion," one Democrat, who...

"Tim was organized and low-key, although given to occasional bursts of profanity and odd fits of giggling." —Ex-car czar Steven Rattner dishes on the Obama administration's views of Detroit during the bailouts in his upcoming book, Overhaul. No one was spared. According to Rattner, Obama asked, "Why can't [GM and Chrysler] make a Corolla?"

The Obama administration appears to be proceeding with a novel way of financing trillion-dollar budget deficits by forcing IRA and 401(k) holders to buy Treasury bonds by mandating the placement of government-structured annuities in their investment accounts. The requirement to invest private retirement assets has been cleverly buried within plans to create "automatic IRAs" that would mandate employer groups enroll all employees in 401(k) or IRA plans. The U.S. Department of Labor released yesterday an agenda for an upcoming joint hearing with the Department of the Treasury scheduled for Sept. 14 and 15 on whether government life-time annuity options funded...

Apparently New York's Mayor Bloomberg was on the short list to be named Secretary Treasurer back in 2008, and now the White House is revisiting the idea. From the NYPost: "It's been the focus of a lot of discussion," said one Democrat. "He's very well-liked and well-respected on Wall Street." At least the second half is probably true. The roots of this rumor are in Martha's Vineyard. Asked about last weekend's four-hour golf game with President Obama on Martha's Vineyard, Bloomberg told reporters yesterday, "The economy was the main subject, other than discussing golf."

Following the steps of the nation’s Treasury Secretary and a powerful New York congressman, a two-term state treasurer who portrays himself as a vigilant custodian of public money has failed to pay taxes over the past decade. Massachusetts Treasurer Timothy Cahill, a gubernatorial candidate, owes the state about $15,000 in taxes for income his campaign committee account has earned from investments in the last ten years. Like the other high-profile public servants who failed miserably to fulfill their civic duty, Cahill only agreed to right the wrong after the media exposed the crime. Cahill has raised millions of dollars for...

"Ideas may be cut loose from experience in two senses: either they have no roots in experience, or they are not submitted to the test of experience. Either way, they are free to be foolish." So wrote Jeane Kirkpatrick in the Introduction to her landmark book, Dictatorships and Double Standards (New York, 1982, p. 10). Kirkpatrick's statement applies perfectly to the band of naïve idealists now in change of our government. The youthful dreamers guiding the Obama administration have almost no private-sector experience. Like Obama himself, the Cabinet and host of czars who direct policy have spent their lives in...

"Ideas may be cut loose from experience in two senses: either they have no roots in experience, or they are not submitted to the test of experience. Either way, they are free to be foolish." So wrote Jeane Kirkpatrick in the Introduction to her landmark book, Dictatorships and Double Standards (New York, 1982, p. 10). Kirkpatrick's statement applies perfectly to the band of naïve idealists now in change of our government. The youthful dreamers guiding the Obama administration have almost no private-sector experience. Like Obama himself, the Cabinet and host of czars who direct policy have spent their lives in...

  Among other things, it looks like the Chicago lobbying to save ShoreBank paid off. Earlier this month I discovered a letter sent by Windy City power player and big Democrat donor Lester McKeever, Jr., to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, which urged his intervention. "It is my hope," McKeever wrote, "and one shared by others who care deeply about its most vulnerable communities, that the ShoreBank recapitalization plan with investment coming from the U.S. Treasury will enable it to continue servicing its customers and fulfilling its mission." In a post today on ShoreBank's blog, online channel manager (whatever that...

UCubed, a group representing unemployed and underemployed workers, sharply criticized Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for his handling of the economy after the Labor Department last week announced that jobless claims had unexpectedly jumped to 500,000. "The pace of job losses is increasing, and Secretary Geithner doesn't have a clue on how to end this grave recession," said Rick Sloan, the group's acting executive director, in prepared remarks. Sloan noted a September 2009 interview with ABC where Geithner predicted that in 12 months jobs would be easier to find and income growth would accelerate. "Geithner was delusional then and he's even...

The October Surprise: Is Obama About To Announce A Massive Shift Towards Cutting Taxes? Joe Weisenthal Aug. 24, 2010, 2:35 PM For some time, the Obama administration has made it pretty clear that it's got no interest in extending the Bush tax cuts, at least not for the wealthy. The line from Tim Geithner has been: the US needs to show a credible commitment towards deficit reduction. But with the yield on the 10-year dipping below 2.5%, and the market now CLEARLY more worried about a double-dip than the US debt, Geithner's justification for hiking taxes sounds silly. Barron's Steve...