Former US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says he regrets not pushing for stronger financial safeguards ahead of the devastating 2008 crisis, according to reported excerpts of his new book.
“Before the crisis, I didn’t push for the Fed in Washington to strengthen the safeguards for banks, nor did I push for legislation in Congress to extend the safeguards to non-banks,” he writes in Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.
Excerpts published online in the New York Times Magazine reveal his behind-the-scenes view of the Wall Street meltdown that rocked the global economy. The book is due to be published today.
Geithner, 52, said that he disagreed with Larry Summers, US President Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser and other members of the administration who were pushing Obama for the nationalization of some embattled banks like Citigroup.
“If you want to go in, you better be sure there are WMD’s [weapons of mass destruction],” Lee Sachs, an assistant-secretary of the Treasury, said during a meeting with Obama, Geithner recounted.
He also confided that he and Summers had initially opposed the Volcker Rule, which prohibits commercial banks from proprietary trading, writing that his support was “certainly political.”
Geithner left his post as head of the Federal Reserve of New York to serve as Treasury secretary during Obama’s first term.
He recalled that he was reluctant to take the job. On his third day in office he refused to make a brief statement in tandem with Obama criticizing Wall Street bonus pay, leaving Obama to do it.
“I did not view Wall Street as a cabal of idiots or crooks... My jobs mostly exposed me to talented senior bankers, and selection bias probably gave me an impression that the US financial sector was more capable and ethical than it really was... I feared that the tougher we talked about the bonuses, the more we would own them, fueling unrealistic expectations about our ability to eradicate extravagance in the financial industry,” he wrote.
Geithner said he is most frequently seen as a banker even though his entire career has been in public service.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
RSS