Tweet
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was spotted at the Four Seasons lunching with disgraced Citigroup director and father of the credit crisis Robert Rubin and Pete "old ladies can eat cat food" Peterson.
The lunch took place on March 3, just coincidentally the day before Geithner’s testimony to the Senate Finance Committee.
Indeed, yesterday we were slumming at the Four Seasons in New York. Among the dinosaurs we observed grazing in the tall grass of this Midtown Manhattan refuge for the transactional class was former C director Robert Rubin, former New York Fed Chairman Pete Peterson and Treasury Secretary Geithner, who apparently was there to get new instructions from his sponsors.
Before Geithner arrived for lunch, Peterson reportedly asked one NY real estate mogul: "How much of that toxic paper is there?" Now we may know where Geithner gathers his market intelligence — over a luncheon table in New York with his owners. Next time we are going to bring the flip-cam.
The website where I found this "Institutional Risk Analytics", is not, as you can tell from the name, some fiery left-wing blog. It is a "publisher of risk ratings and provider of risk management tools and consulting services for auditors, regulators and financial professionals." The article quoted above was written by Chris Whalen, the co-founder of the firm; I see no reason to doubt the veracity of his account.
11 Comments
I agree, it is sad that this is no joke
the last thing we should be doing is taking our kids money and giving it to the people who have stolen from us and destroyed this economy
we should be nationlizing banking, not banks with their toxic assets
the government should take over future banking, cram down the value of assets with the dwelling individual and people given first refusal, any assets the bank has that fails should be theirs
The meeting conveys several messages. First, none of the participants understands anything at all about public perception. Second, this is not the 1950s or even the 1990s where such a meeting would go unnoticed. Third, it illustrates how in bed government and business remain. Fourth, as you point out, it indicates where Geithner is getting his advice and who is pulling his strings, and by association, the strings of US financial policy.
It might have been more reassuring if Geithner had been seen having lunch with Stiglitz, Krugman, Baker, Roubini, or Galbraith. But a discredited banker (Rubin) and a controversial financier who wants to take apart Social Security (Peterson), not so much.
I don’t know about Peterson, but Gietner and Rubin are both members of the Council on Foreign Relations (IMHO, all DAM DIRTY DOGS), as are Yoo and Viet Dinh, mastermind of the Patriot Act.
I best hush; just read that diary by pmorlin about the ship Bataan being used by BushCo as a prison ship…am all riled up.
Normally I’m much more articulate, but with each passing day the language to describe my confusion and exasperation accelerates to a single distilled statement…
FUCK.
The Four Seasons! Did trumpets play? That’s almost as bad as those jokers a few years agos who snatched the imam in Milan after making sure everyone in town knew exactly who they were.
I left something on an earlier thread in my usual dead last spot that might fit here, and in all seriousness I hope people do read the article. Repito:
Refreshing to see this kind of thinking going mainstream in real time. Unfortunately, part of the gloomy message is that it might be too late.
From “Confusion, Tunnelling, and Looting” by Simon Johnson, a former IMF economist:
From there, Johnson delineates some of the clear signs of policy confusion [emanating from Washington] which, bear in mind, is a form of confusion of purpose.
Blecch!
Thick as thieves, and thicker than bricks.
“The course of policy is set. For at least the next 18 months, we know what to expect on the banking front. Now Treasury is committed, the leadership in this area will not deviate from a pro-insider policy for large banks; they are not interested in alternative approaches (I’ve asked). The result will be further destruction of the private credit system and more recourse to relatively nontransparent actions by the Federal Reserve, with all the risks that entails.”
From here
And to back up the above ‘course of policy is set’, see here
Hey, it’s
it used to bea free country.Geithner should be able to eat wherever and with whomever he wants.
And besides, I hear that the Four Seasons’ lunch is quite the bargain.
Something frugal for these difficult times.
geithner is doing exactly what he was hired to do – reassure “the markets”
He’s really succeeding isn’t he?