I just wanted to go over a few people who will be giving away your tax dollars here in the near future…so here are a couple to start off with.
Timothy Geithner – Treasury secretary
Timothy Geithner’s education and resume are quite impressive. He attended Dartmouth College where he received a degree in government and Asian studies. He then attended John Hopkins University and received a MA in international economics and East Asian studies.
In his more recent professional career he was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers in the Clinton Presidency from 1998-2001. In 2001 he became the director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund and held this position until 2003. In 2003 he was named the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
For those who do not like Paulson, you probably will not like Geithner either. Like Paulson, he believes that the treasury department needs new authority to experiment with responses to this current crisis. A little less known is that while Paulson has been taking a lot of heat for all of these bailouts, Geithner was also heavily involved (even called the point person by some) with these as the New York Federal Reserve Bank chief. In fact, he personally wrote up the AIG bailout. He was also involved with all the negotiations of the others. Amazingly he has come out of this whole ordeal unscathed.
I think most people now think that the rescues for our banks have been a disaster for the taxpayer as well as for the Federal Reserve System itself. Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics certainly thinks so and even went as far as saying “Geithner deserves retirement, not promotion.” So at least someone knows he was involved.
Whalen’s reasoning makes sense to me since all of these institutions failed under Geithner’s regulatory watch as the New York Fed chief. But I guess we will have to see how he approaches this current situation. I certainly hope that he does not double up on the bad ideas already executed like they did during the Great Depression years, but unfortunately it looks like history is going to repeat itself.
Lawrence Summers – National Economic Council Director
Summers also has quite a resume as an academic and also in politics. Summers graduated from MIT and then followed with a post graduate degree at Harvard. After graduation he returned to teach at each.
Summers was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan from 1982-1983. He also served as an economic adviser to the Dukakis Presidential campaign in 1988. Summers then worked for President Clinton during his administration. After working as the Undersecretary for International Affairs, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and then eventually succeeded his mentor Robert Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury in 1999. Most recently he was the President of Harvard until he was forced to resign in 2006 due to numerous controversies of his own doing.
Although intelligent, most question his leadership and his Rahm Emanuel style. Here are some of the ways people have described his personality. Arrogant, politically incorrect, provocateur, egotistical. In fact during past treasury meetings staffers were reluctant to disagree with anything he said because he was so harsh. In addition to this, he resigned as Harvard President after the Harvard faculty gave him a vote of no confidence due to his controversial nature and poor leadership. I do not believe that this is the person that should lead a team of any type, and it certainly does not fall in line with Obama’s promise of change and bringing in those with different viewpoints.
Summers will overshadow everyone else on this team so it really does not matter what others think. It would also be important to note that Summers is one of Geithner’s mentors so it makes you wonder who will really be in charge.
And if you can believe it he does have a tie in to a recent catastrophe. Summers is a managing director of a Hedge Fund with major ties to Lehman Brothers.
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