TPMMuckraker
Tim Geithner: April 2009

Dissecting Tim Geithner's 658-Page Schedule

Moe Tkacik | April 27, 2009, 6:27PM

As Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner's public image has generally seemed "not quite ready for prime time." But his PR acumen as president of the New York Fed was in large part credited for landing him the job -- and now we know why. Geithner made one-on-one coffee dates, luncheons, tennis games, dinners and conference calls with reporters a major part of his job at the New York Fed, from the looks of the official schedule posted this morning by the New York Times. In addition to regular press briefings, backgrounders and whatever Geithner slipped in on his own time, Geithner scheduled one-on-one time for more than 68 journalists from 2007 to 2008, including twelve from the New York Times, ten from the Wall Street Journal and eight from the Financial Times. His favorite journalist by far appears to be Krishna Guha, an editorial page writer at the Financial Times, to whom he granted 12 interviews.

The Journal's Jon Hilsenrath and David Wessel, the FT's Gillian Tett and Chrystia Freedland and House of Cards author William Cohan also make a lot of appearances on Geithner's schedule, in addition to professional pundits Fareed Zakariah and Tom Friedman. What's particularly striking about Geithner's media schedule is how willing he seemed to be to speak individually with multiple reporters from the same media outlet: some days he would speak separately with three different FT journalists. As the Times has pointed out, Geithner wasn't necessarily satisfied with his press; the schedule shows three meetings with a publicist who represents Citigroup, and a few others with New York PR patriarch Howard Rubenstein.

PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (8)
Topics: Tim Geithner

Tim Geithner

The New, Amended Case Against Tim "Magical Thinking" Geithner

Moe Tkacik | April 27, 2009, 1:34PM

On the face of it, the lengthy Tim Geithner profile in today's New York Times is not quite as unflattering as last Friday's cover story in Portfolio -- but it's pretty close. Both perpetuate a slightly altered narrative about the Treasury Secretary: where earlier hit jobs depicted Geithner as a limp-wristed bureaucrat who took marching orders from the plutocrats who appointed him to head the New York Fed, the latest stories further the notion of Geithner as precocious, fundamentally unprepared child -- a sort of Sarah Palin of Clinton-anointed technocrats. A structured finance expert accuses him of "magical thinking" in the Times; Portfolio quotes Mike Barnicle's "eyes of a shoplifter" observation. "Think Bambi looking into the headlights on an 18-wheeler," says one economist of Geithner's fumbling through a question-and-answer session in 2006. "People thought, 'Whoa, that's kind of out there,'" says comptroller of the currency John C. Dugan of a short-lived proposal Geithner advanced last June to guarantee all bank debt. Management expert Peter Cohan suggests Geithner is flailing because he isn't very "good at math."

Between the lines of both stories, tough, are some more tangibly problematic signs for Geithner's future in the post.

PERMALINK | COMMENTS (10) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (8)
Topics: Tim Geithner

Bailout

Congress To Probe Geithner's "Special Purpose" Plan To Skirt Pay Caps On Bankers

Moe Tkacik | April 7, 2009, 2:53PM

Yesterday we puzzled over the mixed messages we were hearing from Obama officials over the veracity of a Washington Post report that it was using Enron-style "special purpose vehicles" to undermine executive pay restrictions on bailed out banks: senior adviser David Axelrod sheepishly defended the strategy on one Sunday talk show, while Tim Geithner denied it altogether on another. But newly-promoted House Oversight Chairman Ed Towns is getting to the bottom of it, reports the Post today, in a story that sheds some much-needed light on the conflicting stories: the strategy began with the Treasury Department's $1 trillion consumer and business lending initiative, which is in part an expansion of the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, which is open to the American subsidiaries of foreign banks, which Treasury presumably wants to participate in the programs without having to deal with the added diplomatic headache of subjecting foreign bankers to rules designed to satisfy American voters. Unsurprisingly, not everyone in Congress is opposed to that.

A senior House aide said he agreed with the Treasury's policy and that he believed a recent vote by the House on another piece of executive compensation legislation showed that Congress did not intend the restrictions to apply to firms that did not receive direct capital injections. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment.

Oversight sees things differently, however.

PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2) | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (4)
Topics: Bailout, David Axelrod, Edolphus Towns, Oversight Committee, Tim Geithner

Tim Geithner

Is The White House Helping Bailed Out Banks Skirt Pay Caps? Depends What Channel You're Watching

Moe Tkacik | April 6, 2009, 3:22PM

On Saturday the Washington Post reported that the administration was doling out federal bailout money via "special purpose vehicles" to help banks skirt restrictions on the funds imposed by Congress -- including, naturally, limitations on executive pay. In a move a former Justice Department attorney equated to "money laundering," the story further specified that the White House had concluded that the conditions ought not to apply in "at least three out of five initiatives funded by the rescue package."

The story quoted Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams defending the strategy, and on Sunday senior Obama adviser David Axelrod, despite his reported distaste for Treasury's lenience on the banks, went on Fox News Sunday and towed the Treasury line when Chris Wallace brought up the report.

But a bit later the same morning on Face the Nation the policy seemed to have changed -- if you believed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's unequivocal denial to CBS's Bob Schieffer that any such plan compensation-restriction avoidance plan existed:

Transcripts after the jump: