Geithner's shtick is well past being old. Now it's infuriating, offensive and insulting. As everyone imagined, the NY Fed - where Geithner was President until late January - was informed of the AIG bonuses so the shock that Geithner displayed once he took over Treasury was as false as previously thought. The Geithner approach is the same as the Paulson approach which means let these bums have whatever they want and let taxpayers take all of the downside. In defense of Geithner though, Obama clearly is calling the shots and he too seems comfortable with staying the course with Wall Street. This is a risky gamble to side with Wall Street though maybe he still believes they will play nice if they get everything. The Washington Post:
As American International Group chief executive Edward M. Liddy returns to Washington to face Congress today, new details are emerging about how long federal officials were aware of the company's recent bonus payments to its executives and of how inflammatory the payments could be.Whether his name is on the list doesn't even matter. If it was, surprise, he knew what we thought he knew all along. If it wasn't, what the heck was he doing at the NY Fed? Why would they not tell him? That would be very troubling if the president was out of the loop on such a key issue and one would have to wonder about the team that he had in place.
Documents show that senior officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York received details about the bonuses more than five months before the firestorm erupted and were deeply engaged with AIG as well as outside lawyers, auditors and public relations firms about the potential controversy. But the New York Fed did not raise the alarm with the Obama administration until the end of February.
Timothy F. Geithner, who became Treasury secretary early this year, was the head of the New York Fed when it became aware of the bonus details. But his name is not among those of senior New York Fed officials mentioned in the summaries of phone calls, correspondence and other documents obtained by The Washington Post.
