The New Yorker on Geithner

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/03/the-new-yorker-on-geithner

The New York's John Cassidy writes up his interview with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in which Mr. Geithner complains he just isn't understood. Mr. Cassidy quotes Mr. Geithner as saying, "We saved the economy, but we kind of lost the public doing it." From the New Yorker article:

The hardest part of his job, Geithner often says, is getting people to comprehend the inner logic of a financial-rescue operation, and the unpopular actions it entails. In fact, his problem may be not economic illiteracy but its opposite: Americans understand all too well what has happened. Financial crises have a way of revealing aspects of our economic system that otherwise remain obscured, such as the symbiotic relationship between Wall Street and Washington, the hidden subsidies that financial firms sometimes receive from the Fed and other government agencies, and the fact that the vast profits that firms like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman generate depend in part on an implicit guarantee from the taxpayer. When ordinary Americans are confronted with these realities, they get angry. "People just don't get how these institutions got bailed out and their people are still making big bonuses," Mark Zandi noted. "It just does not compute. No matter what you say, you can't persuade them it's right."

Some of the same issues are here as we raised after the Wall Street Journal's interview with Mr. Geithner.

by Ira Stoll  |  Mar 8, 2010 at 9:49 am Related Topics:  Banking, Capital Markets Regulation, Compensation, Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Press, Timothy Geithner receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list