Timothy Geithner

Timothy F. Geithner, 2009

Timothy Franz Geithner [ gaɪtnər (*] 18 August 1961 in Brooklyn , New York City ) was the 75th  United States Treasury Secretary ( United States Secretary of the Treasury ). On January 26, 2009, his previous appointment by US President Barack Obama was confirmed by the US Senate . Timothy F. Geithner served through January 25, 2013. Successor was Jacob Lew .

Life

One of his grandfathers, Paul Herman Geithner (1902–1972), was born in Germany and emigrated to Philadelphia in 1908 with his parents, who came from Zeulenroda . His other grandfather, Charles Frederick Moore Jr., was Vice President PR of Ford Motor Company from 1952 to 1964 , advising President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller and George W. Romney presidential campaigns. His uncle, Jonathan Moore, served in the United States Departments of Defense , Justice and State Department, and the United Nations . His father, Peter F. Geithner, was the director of the Ford Foundation's Asia Program in New York in the 1990s after working for the United States Agency for International Development in Zambia and Zimbabwe . In the early 1980s, he oversaw the Ford Foundation's microfinance programs in Indonesia, developed by Ann Dunham Soetoro , mother of future President Barack Obama. Peter F. Geithner and Ann Dunham Soetoro met at least once in person in Jakarta .

Tim Geithner was a student at the International School Bangkok in Thailand and then attended Dartmouth College (New Hampshire), which he left with a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Asian Studies in 1983. He then did his Master of Arts in International Economics and (East) Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University 's School of Advanced International Studies in 1985 . He also studied Japanese and Chinese . After that he lived in East Africa , India , Thailand, China and Japan .

Geithner is married to Carole M. Sonnenfeld and they have two children together.

Career history

After Geithner finished his studies, he worked for three years for the management consultancy Henry Kissinger in Washington and from 1988 worked for the International Affairs Division of the US Treasury Department. In 1999 he was promoted to Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs , serving in that capacity under US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers . In 2002 he left the agency and took up a position as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics Department of the Council on Foreign Relations . He then worked as director of the Policy Development and Review Department of the International Monetary Fund before becoming the 9th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in October 2003 . In this role he was also Vice President of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). In 2006, he became a member of the Washington-based and influential financial advisor Group of Thirty .

On November 23, 2008, it was announced that US President- elect Barack Obama would appoint him to his cabinet as Treasury Secretary . Its confirmation by the US Senate was delayed several days after it became known that Geithner failed to pay around 34,000 dollars in taxes during his time with the International Monetary Fund and that this money was delayed several years, in some cases immediately before his nomination Obama had paid back. He apologized for this to the Senate Finance Committee and spoke of "negligent mistakes" that he had made. Finally, the Senate approved his appointment with 60:34 votes. Among the senators who voted against Geithner's endorsement were Democrats Robert Byrd , Russ Feingold and Tom Harkin, and independent Democrat Bernie Sanders .

Role as crisis manager and in financial market reform

The four banks most affected by the banking and financial crisis are also represented as shareholders in the US Federal Reserve , the chairman of which was Geithner, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York , which is important in this context . In this function, Geithner was responsible in 2008 for putting together rescue packages for the financial houses together with then Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke. However, this did not happen for the investment bank Lehman Brothers. As Treasury Secretary he was responsible for the more than $ 800 billion economic stimulus package under Obama in 2009.

Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman , sharply criticized Geithner's crisis policy for the fact that, for example, the insurance group AIG was supported by the state unconditionally and without the involvement of creditors, without any new regulation of the banking system being achieved. This has shaken the confidence of voters in politics for a long time.

The fact that the AIG rescue was not so “unconditional” is shown by the claim for damages by the former major shareholder Starr International, represented by Maurice Greenberg . In the lawsuit, Geithner's predecessor Hank Paulson testified that the terms of the AIG bailout were punitive. Geithner himself was confronted in court with passages from his book Stress Test ; he defended the AIG bailout as having no alternative, but described his choice of words at the time ( nationalization , expropriation) as imprecise.

Publications

• Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises . Crown, 2014, ISBN 978-0-8041-3859-8 ( review in the NZZ ).

Web links

Commons : Timothy F. Geithner  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• CV at the US Treasury Department. ( Memento from January 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
• Official site of Tim Geithner , NY Fed
• Timothy Geithner at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia (English)
• Who's who: The Federal Open Markets Committee , MSNBC
• Bernanke's quiet skipper makes waves , MarketWatch.com of March 21, 2008
• "Geithner, Member and Overseer of Finance Club" , New York Times , April 26, 2009, with the graph: Geithner's friends in the NY Fed

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from October 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , rootsweb 
2. ^ ^{A b} Susan Milton: Treasury nominee has ties to Orleans . In: Cape Cod Times , November 25, 2008. Retrieved July 31, 2016. 
3. ^ Ford Foundation Links Parents of Obama and Treasury Secretary Nominee . Chronicle of Philanthropy . December 3, 2008. Retrieved February 25, 2011.
4. ^ Carole M. Sonnenfeld wed to TF Geithner . In: New York Times , June 9, 1985. 
5. ^ Geithner's profile at the NY Fed website
6. ↑ Jonathan Fuerbringer: IMF Official Is Named President of New York Fed . In: New York Times , October 16, 2003. Archived from the original on January 31, 2009 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
7. ↑ "Obama's Super Cabinet - Timothy Geithner becomes US Treasury Secretary" , Spiegel online, November 23, 2008
8. ^ "Senate gives the green light for Geithner" , Spiegel online, January 27, 2009
9. ↑ Result of the Senate vote ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on January 26, 2009 
10. ^ Geithner's friends at the NY Fed. , New York Times, April 26, 2009.
11. ↑ Patrick Welter, Timothy Geithner, in: FAZ, August 9, 2011, p. 8.
12. ^ Paul Krugman: The Big Squander. New York Times, November 19, 2009.
13. ^ Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary in 2008, testified on Monday that AIG had received “punitive” terms. However, he said this had been necessary to prevent the "moral hazard" of encouraging excessive risk taking by other financial institutions receiving assistance
14. ↑ http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/07/us-aig-bailout-idUSKCN0HW1RS20141007