Geithner "Out Of The Loop," Resignation Talk Begins

Henry Blodget

Mar. 17, 2009, 2:25 PM

 

A week ago, we lost patience with Tim Geithner and called for him to be fired. He won't be fired, of course--throwing him under the bus only a month or so into his tenure would embarrass the Obama administration--but we have now heard the first public discussion of a possible resignation.

 

Why might Tim Geithner resign?

• He still has no coherent plan to fix the banking system
• He has convinced no one that he's the right man to lead us out of this.
• He helped design the past administration's failed bailouts
• He was the architect of the original AIG bailout
• He tacitly helped cover up the AIG "counterparty" bailout beneficiaries for 6 months
• He approved the latest round of AIG bonuses last week (according to AIG)
  

At the very least, Geithner needs to answer for his role in the original AIG bailout, which has been a disaster, as well as the counterparty cover-up. 

In September, Geithner and Hank Paulson engineered an AIG bailout in which Paulson's firm (and one of Geithner's patrons on the New York Fed) secretly received $13 billion of taxpayer money that no taxpayer was told about. Now that taxpayers have found out about it, they are justifiably pissed. 

In any event, Republicans have been emboldened by Geithner's stumbles, and they're getting closer to calling for his head:

Huffington Post: Sen. Richard Shelby, ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, charged that Geithner had known about the AIG bonus payments before they were made and failed to stop them...

Shelby said that Geithner "either knew or should have known what was going on. We need to know, what are the details of this? When were the bonuses signed up? Who's getting it?"

The Alabama senator stopped short of calling for Geithner's resignation, saying "he's under fire from all sides now."

"I don't know if he should resign over this," Shelby said. "He works for the president of the United States. But I can tell you, this is just another example of where he seems to be out of the loop. Treasury should have let the American people know about this."

House Republicans Planning To Try To Force Treasury To Recoup AIG Bonuses

Seventy-Three New Millionaires at AIG, as the Company Fails

NY Atty. Gen.: 73 AIG Executives Got $1 Million Bonuses or More 17 Mar 2009 Seventy-three employees of troubled American International Group received more than $1 million in bonuses under contracts that guranteed them 100 percent of their 2007 pay in 2008 regardless of performance, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said. The relevation comes a day after Cuomo subpeonaed AIG for information regarding $165 million paid to executives and other workers in the company's troubled financial products division, chiefly responsible for bringing the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. The firm has required $170 billion in government injections bailout. [The PentaPost is wh*ring for the Reichwing propagandists, once again -- calling billions in bailouts 'injections.' How stupid do they think we are? I mean, that's like calling prisoners at Guantanamo 'detainees' and torture 'abuse.' --LRP]

AIG Threatened with Subpoenas Over Bonuses --NY Attorney General Cuomo Wants Names and Numbers by 4pm Monday 16 Mar 2009 The hot seat is getting even hotter for AIG Chairman and CEO Edward Liddy. ...The New York Attorney General has set a deadline of 4pm Monday for Liddy to release the names and job descriptions of those receiving bonuses stating that if the information is not received this afternoon that he will seek a subpoena to force compliance.

Obama's Outrage: President Wants Treasury to Block to AIG Bonuses --Obama: 'It's Hard to Understand How Derivative Traders at AIG Warranted Any Bonuses' 16 Mar 2009 President Obama publicly fumed today over plans by the bailed-out insurance giant AIG to reward it executives with $165 million worth of bonuses and asked his treasury secretary to "pursue every single legal avenue" to block them. "This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," the president said.

Chorus of outrage over millions in AIG bonuses 15 Mar 2009 Leaders of the White House economic team and the Senate's top Republican [hypocritical scumbags and architects of deregulation, who purposefully caused the whole system to topple] bellowed about bonuses at a bailed-out insurance giant and pledged to prevent such payments in the future. From one Sunday talk show to the next, they tore into the contracts that American International Group asserted had to be honored, to the tune of about $165 million and payable to executives by Sunday, even as the company has benefited from more than $170 billion in a federal rescue. AIG has agreed to Obama administration [conciliators] requests to restrain future payments.

AIG ships billions in bailout abroad --Administration 'couldn't stop' AIG from doling out $165 million in bonuses to some of its top corporate officials – even as the company was receiving a massive infusion of taxpayer funds. 15 Mar 2009 Billions of American taxpayer dollars used to bailout insurance giant AIG are flowing to some of the largest foreign banks in the world, according to new documents released by beleaguered company Sunday. In all, AIG disclosed payments of $105.3 billion between September and December 2008. Some of the biggest recipients were European banks. Societe Generale, based in France, was the top foreign recipient at $11.9 billion, Deutsche Bank of Germany got $11.8 billion and Barclays, based in England, was paid $8.5 billion.