that no one at the Treasury knows how long they can get by
Than and the fact that we don't have a Treasury secretary right now.
economist.com
Farewell, Tim Geithner
IF THE Republicans do not raise the ceiling on America’s government debt, Barack Obama said on January 14th, the markets will go “haywire” and the country will plunge back into crisis. Tim Geithner, his treasury secretary, noted on the same day that this could happen in as little as a month from now.
But if all goes according to plan, Mr Geithner will not be around by then; he will have handed the reins to Jack Lew, currently the White House chief of staff. That could be a pity. Thousands of people have studied financial crises, but it would be hard to name anyone who has actually grappled with as many as Mr Geithner (see chart). While working in the 1990s for Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretaries, he dealt with currency and banking crises throughout the emerging world. When the global financial crisis erupted in 2007, he was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; this gave him a key role in the Fed’s response, including the bail-outs of Bear Stearns and AIG, an insurance company, and the decision to let Lehman Brothers fail. As Mr Obama’s treasury secretary, he designed and carried out the stress tests and capital injections that stabilised the banking system, as well as multiple mortgage schemes that ultimately did little to curb an avalanche of foreclosures. |
