Judging by his actions it does not appear Giethner believes in free markets. For him, the government needs to stand by with buckets and buckets of money.
According to reports, in 1997 he was instrumental in pushing then Treasury Secretary Rubin to OK a bailout of South Korea.
Geithner also was reportedly behind the $29 billion guarantee against losses that the Fed made to JP Morgan when JPM purchased Bear Stearns. The guarantees against losses, it should be noted was in addition to the fact that JPM stole Bear Stearns at a huge discount from its liquidation value.
His interventionist credentials are pretty well established on Wall Street. Here's Larry Kudlow's thinking on Geithner ans the next tranche of the $700 Billion Paulson boondoggle:
As for the TARP bailout story, it is generally believed that Geithner is a strong interventionist. And so we can expect him to move toward raising the second $350 billion tranche of the originally authorized $700 billion package by Congress.
Geithner graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in government and Asian studies in 1983 and from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with a master’s in International Economics and East Asian Studies in 1985, according to his official bio on the New York Fed site.
He joined the Treasury in 1988 and worked in three administrations, serving as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1999 to 2001 under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.
He also worked for Kissinger Associates for three years.
He become New York Fed president in 2003. In that capacity, he worked as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the group responsible for formulating the nation's monetary policy.
One side note. Geithner graduated from the International School of Bangkok, Thailand. His father appears to be a possible CIA agent and is listed by the New York Times as the "program officer in charge of developing countries for the Ford Foundation."
Geithner falls under the Robert Rubin wing of Goldman Sachs influence, as he worked for Rubin when Rubin was Treasury Secretary.Geithner also serves as chairman of the G-10’s Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems of the Bank for International Settlements. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Group of Thirty.
But it is his interventionist bent that could prove we have a major inflationist at Treasury. One Obama confident relates a recent conversation between an associate and a Fed official, in which the latter complained, "Christ, Geithner wants to save everybody."
More money hand outs to Wall Street, no wonder the market jumped 500 points on news of the Geithner selection.
