I think that Geithner will be gone by June….He should have rented a house, because we now have a report that Treasury was informed of the bonuses two weeks before Geithner says that he knew, which makes him either a liar, or incompetent.
Me, I’ll go with liar, as it is clear that the Obama administration is lying their asses off about Dodd’s role in proposed bonus restrictions in the bailout legislation, and the logical people lying about it right now are all on the Geithner/Summers “axis of weasels”:
After the recent furor relating to the AIG payments, lawmakers returned to make a forensic examination of the provision seeking to assign blame for what some called a secret agreement to spare the tottering insurance giant, which has received more than $170 billion in federal aid. The provision and its genesis consumed Capital Hill Wednesday.
“The president goes out and says this is not acceptable and then some backroom deal gets cut to let these things get paid out anyway,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, (D., Ore.), author of an earlier, alternative pay amendment, told the Associated Press.
The Obama administration had not tried to hide its concern about the moves to clamp down on executive compensation. Both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers lobbied Mr. Dodd to make changes.
Administration officials said the Treasury didn’t suggest any language or say how the amendment should be changed. They said they noted legal issues that could likely lead to challenges, but was the end of their involvement. The official said Mr. Dodd and Congress made the final changes on their own.
At issue were competing provisions in the stimulus bill that capped executive compensation for recipients of bailout funds. One, drafted by Sens. Wyden and Olympia J. Snowe (R, Maine), would have capped bonuses at $100,000, retroactive to 2008. Companies awarding bonuses above that level would face the choice of returning those funds to the Treasury or having them taxed at 35%.
“Administration Officials” means someone under Geithner’s or Summers’ control here.
What’s more, the rest of the world does not have any confidence in Geithner either, as evidenced by the IMF criticizing his plan as “lacking detail.”
The IMF never criticizes a Secretary of the Treasury, and the fact that they are now indicates that there are a number of foreign nations that are sick of him, and signed off on this statement.
We need someone who will hold the financial industry to account, and Geithner still has knee pads on.