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(Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday defended the Obama administration's financial reforms, saying they were not hostile to the financial system.

WASHINGTON — As the housing bubble entered its waning hours in 2006, top Federal Reserve officials marveled at the desperate antics of home builders seeking to lure buyers. The officials laughed about the cars that builders were offering as signing bonuses, and about efforts to make empty homes look occupied. They joked about one builder who said that inventory was “rising through the roof.” But the officials, meeting every six weeks to discuss the health of the nation’s economy, gave little credence to the possibility that the faltering housing market would weigh on the broader economy, according to transcripts that...

WASHINGTON – The desperation of homebuilders was a running joke among top Federal Reserve officials during the waning phase of the housing bubble in 2006, according to transcripts released Thursday. They laughed about the cars that builders were giving to buyers. They laughed about efforts to make empty homes look occupied. They laughed at a report that one builder said inventory was rising “through the roof.”

For the second time in two years, European debt troubles threaten to slow the momentum of the fragile recovery in the United States.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner strongly defended President Obama from criticism that he was distracted from dealing with the economy in 2009 as he tried to pass healthcare reform. “Absolutely not," Geithner told CBS News' Norah O'Donnell when asked if Obama had taken "his eye off the ball on jobs.'' "He was relentlessly focused on it," Geithner said in the interview that aired Tuesday night. "And in fact he was doing things that were deeply difficult politically for him.” Geithner cited the $825-billion stimulus package passed in early 2009, along with the government rescue of General Motors and Chrysler, as...

The U.S. plans on being an active partner as efforts intensify to get Europe get back on its feet financially, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNBC Friday. Getty Images U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner With global leaders preparing for next month's Group of 20 nations (G20) summit in Cannes, France, the International Monetary Fund — of which the U.S. is the greatest contributor — is being relied on to help underwrite whatever efforts are needed to backstop toxic European sovereign debt . Geithner said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has "very substantial" resources to fund a device that could look...

Geithner: Action against Wall St. coming By: Tim Mak October 14, 2011 10:51 AM EDT Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggested Friday that a new round of “dramatic enforcement actions” against Wall Street wrongdoing is coming. “Stay tuned for that,” Geithner said. Asked on CNBC about the Occupy Wall Street movement’s frustrations over the lack of criminal charges related to the financial crisis, Geithner said action is on the way. “You’ve seen very, very dramatic enforcement actions already by the enforcement authorities across the U.S. government, and I’m sure you’re going to see more to come. You should stay tuned for...

Newt Gingrich is asked about the Occupy Wall Street movement at the Bloomberg debate in New Hampshire: New Gingrich: "If they want to change things, the first thing to do is fire Bernanke, who is a disaster as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The second person to fire is Geithner. The fact is, in both the Bush and the Obama administrations the fix has been in. And I think it's perfectly reasonable to be angry. But let's be clear about who put the fix in. The fix was put in by the federal government. If you want to put people...

An audit of the Federal Reserve has revealed that the privately owned Federal Reserve secretly doled out more than $16 trillion in zero interest loans to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world. The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed acted illegally. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to its employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans. The report is evidence that reveals major securities fraud...

This little-known government bank, the Federal Financing Bank [FFB], had a zero balance in 2008 for green energy projects, but now, with little Congressional oversight, it is giving out billions of dollars in loans to White House pet projects often at dirt-cheap interest rates below 1%. In July alone, the government bank, which had $61 billion in assets, lent nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in taxpayer funds with no Congressional checks and balances. Plus the bank is funding the insolvent U.S. Post Office; the White House’s expensive green car projects at Ford Motor, Nissan and Tesla Motors; a...

Treasury chief Timothy F. Geithner and others were worried that the selection process for federal loan guarantees fell short and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong firms. Jonathan Ernst / Reuters / September 27, 2011 Solyndra President and Chief Executive Officer Brian Harrison, left, and Chief Financial Officer W.G. Stover are sworn in before a hearing on Capitol Hill. Reporting from Washington— Long before the politically connected California solar firm Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama was warned by his top economic advisors about the financial and political risks of the Energy Department loan guarantee program...

Europe, the G20, and the global authorities have one last chance to contain the EMU debt crisis with a nuclear solution or abdicate responsibility and watch as the world slides into depression, endangering the benign but fragile order that has taken shape over the last three decades. The threat of cascading default, bank runs, and catastrophic risk must be taken off the table," said US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner over the weekend. "Sovereign and banking stresses in Europe are the most serious risk now confronting the world economy. Decisions cannot wait until the crisis gets more severe." Euroland's dysfunctional arrangements...

It's good to see someone thinking clearly, and that someone is certainly not Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who wants to dump more Euro risk on the backs of European taxpayers, especially German taxpayers. Bloomberg reports Germany Rejects Using ECB Leverage to Increase European Rescue Fund’s Size

Geithner's Trip To Europe: Spend-aholics Shouldn't Give Advice To Spend-aholicsDaniel J. Mitchell, Contributor 9/18/2011 @ 8:50PM Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has been savaged in the United States for cheating on his taxes (you can buy a T-shirt to commemorate his tax dodging), but he’s becoming a punch line in the rest of the world for different reasons. I wrote two years ago about Chinese students erupting in laughter after Geithner claimed the Administration believed in a strong dollar. Now he’s getting mocked by the Europeans. After Friday’s post about the absurdity of Obama sending his Treasury Secretary to lecture the...

Unelected, Unaccountable, Unrepentant: The Federal Reserve Is Using Your Money To Bail Out European Commercial Banks Once AgainSeptember 16,2011 For a moment, imagine that there is a privately-owned organization in the United States that can create U.S. dollars out of thin air whenever it wants and can loan that money to whoever it wants to. Imagine that this organization is able to act with the full power of the U.S. government behind it, but that nobody in the organization is ever elected by the American people, and that for all practical purposes the organization is not accountable to the president...

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011 Geithner Says Europe Lacks Unity, Action in Crisis BY CHARLES FORELLE WROCLAW, Poland—The U.S. Treasury secretary warned his European counterparts of the "catastrophic risk" of the Continent's swirling sovereign-debt crisis, pointing out divisions among the 17 nations who use the euro, and between those countries and their central banks. But European finance ministers meeting here reacted coolly to Timothy Geithner's sharp exhortations Friday to bolder action, officials said, in a sign that Europe's stronger economies were nearing the limits of their ability—or desire—to pay for backstops for the weak. Europe is at a difficult juncture. The bailout...

A new book offering an insider's account of the White House's response to the financial crisis says that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ignored an order from President Barack Obama calling for reconstruction of major banks. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, the incident is just one of several in which Obama struggled with a divided group of advisers, some of whom he didn't initially consider for their high-profile roles. Suskind states that Obama accepts the blame for mismanagement in his administration while noting that restructuring the financial system was complicated and could have resulted in deeper financial harm....

NEW YORK (AP) -- A new book offering an insider's account of the White House's response to the financial crisis says that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ignored an order from President Barack Obama calling for reconstruction of major banks. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, the incident is just one of several in which Obama struggled with a divided group of advisers, some of whom he didn't initially consider for their high-profile roles. Suskind interviewed more than 200 people, including Obama, Geithner and other top officials for "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and The Education of A President,"...

Just because it is not enough for Tim Geithner to be mocked, ridiculed and generally despised on one continent, the former New York Fed "Hudsucker Proxy-style" plant has just managed to become the most despised individual on at least one more continent. Bloomberg reports that European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said countries offering advice on how Europe should solve its debt crisis should put their own fiscal situation in order first. "Finger-pointing in the direction of Europe shouldn’t prevent others from putting their budgets in order and doing their homework before handing out advice to Europeans," Stark...

The global economy is being held back in part by political problems that are complicating an Delivering Alpha array of other forces that have conspired against growth, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said. Speaking during the "Delivering Alpha" conference—organized by CNBC and Institutional Investor—Geithner said the US recovery is slower than many would like and that's not being helped by chaos in Washington. "You have this terribly damaging political dysfunction here and in Europe that leaves the world wondering whether the political system has the capacity to do the right thing," he said. "That is very damaging to confidence."