What Did Geithner Know and When Did He Know It? [View All]

[leftchick]

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://smirkingchimp.com)



By Cenk Uygur
Created Mar 18 2009 - 9:59am

There are now conflicting stories <1> about when Tim Geithner knew about the AIG bonuses. The administration says he found out last week. But Congress (and obviously the administration) knew of plans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses last fall. There was an SEC filing to pay $469 million in "retention payments" to AIG executives in November of last year.

How could Geithner not have known about any of this? He'd have to be the only one in Washington that didn't know. More troubling is his earlier instance, especially during the stimulus package fight, that these companies be able to pay bonuses without much limitation.

Look at this article <2> from February 9th in the New York Times that explains how he fought against pay caps - and won. How is this not completely his responsibility?

For him to pretend to be surprised now when he actively fought to make sure bonuses were not limited is disingenuous at best.

Finally, another interesting question is - why? He claims it's because these banks couldn't keep the best and the brightest talent otherwise. That seems laughable, but he might have actually believed it because he has been surrounded by people who have internalized this idea for so long.

But let's consider one other possibility first.

Robert Rubin played ball with Wall Street and helped them to deregulate a lot of these financial markets right before Clinton left office. He then conveniently went to work for one of those banks and collected a whopping $115 million <3> at least <4> from Citigroup for sitting on their board for a period of years. Does Geithner know this is the reward for loyalty <5> - to the banks?