In her
article in The New York Times, Gretchen
Morgenson raises the possibility that Tim Geithner, president of the New York
Federal Reserve from 2003 to early 2009 and U.S. Treasury Secretary during
Obama’s first term, was a captured regulator, “a man locked into the mind-set
of the very bankers he was supposed to oversee.”[1]
I contend that while a shared mindset was part of the mix, he was actively
doing the bidding of Wall Street, and one bank in particular, which he owed big
time. That is to say, it is not just that he worked with Republicans such as
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, and Henry Paulson, Bush’s Treasury Secretary.
There is more to it in him being portrayed throughout his confirmation hearing
for Treasury as “a tool of Wall Street.”[2]
The full essay is at TimothyGeithner: A Regulator Beholden to a Bank?
[2]
Timothy Geithner, Stress Test (Random
House: New York, 2014), p. 2.
