Wall Street cadre has Geithner on speed dial: When these men call, Treasury boss answers (AP)

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wall-Street-speed-dial-gets-apf-3283001415.html?x=0

Wall Street speed dial gets Tim Geithner directly
Wall Street cadre has Geithner on speed dial: When these men call, Treasury boss answers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As the federal government propped up the housing market and braced for the collapse of General Motors this spring, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner capped a busy week with phone conversations with three men. The first was Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The second was Jamie Dimon, the CEO at JPMorgan Chase & Co. The third was President Barack Obama.

Dimon and Blankfein are members of an exclusive club: Along with executives at Citigroup Inc., they are among a cadre of Wall Street executives who have known Geithner for years, whose multibillion-dollar companies survived the economic crisis with his help, and who can pick up the phone and reach the nation's most powerful economic official.

Geithner's calendars, obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the extraordinary influence of three companies. More than any other company or any of their rival banks, Goldman, Citi and JPMorgan can get Geithner on the phone several times a day if necessary, giving them an unmatched opportunity to influence policy.

"They're people he has relationships with and who he can trust," said Taylor Griffin, a Treasury Department spokesman during the George W. Bush administration and an adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of John McCain. Griffin defended Geithner's relationships with industry executives. "There's only so much time in the day and you can only talk to so many people. You choose the people whose point of view you value."

There is nothing inherently wrong with senior Treasury Department officials talking to industry executives, or even with the secretary keeping tabs on the market's biggest players. But the calendars offered fodder for critics who say Geithner is too close to the Wall Street firms he helped bail out following the economic meltdown... In the first seven months of Geithner's tenure, his calendars reflect at least 80 contacts with Blankfein, Dimon, Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons or Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit. Geithner had more contacts with Citigroup than with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who leads the effort to approve Geithner's overhaul of the financial system. Geithner's contacts with Blankfein alone outnumber his contacts with Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

:grr:

I just got back from seeing "Capitalism: A Love Story" so I have even less tolerance than usual.

pillaging treasury complicity between government and the banks going back to the Reagan administration. I think it's time for him to leave Obama's administration.

Only a banker can know understand how really complicated and important this stuff is, and recognize how brilliant Geithner and Summers are.

The rest of us can only watch in awe.

:spray:

obviously you are a blatant racist.

:sarcasm:

When I heard Geithner had worked for Goldman Sachs I knew he would be a whore.

Goldman paid $11 billion in corporate tax in '06 & '07, and since most of their expenses are compensation, their employees pay much more in income tax than that.

JP Morgan paid $13.5 billion in those two years with employees again paying huge amounts of income tax though they have a larger employee base with a lower avg tax rate.

this type of profitability obviously hit a massive speed bump in '08 and the first quarter of '09, but we're seeing a return to large profits and subsequently large corporate tax and individual tax payments returning.

And that's just the hors d'doeuvre for the $13 trillion of our tax money that's at risk covering junk assets.

The Paulson/Summers/Geithner plan has been an astonishing transfer of cash to the bankers from everyone else.

When you hand me $13 billion dollars, $1 for $1 in Taxpayer money from AIG, than you lend me money at a 0 interest rate and you allow the people in my firm who know how to manipulate markets via trading to take the money you lent me to go out and trade.

They were given the money to be an investment bank, not a trading firm. I'd rather they had kept the money longer and behaved like an investment bank and invested in new business for a profit.

How much do you imagine the entire American financial industry is worth?

makes me openly question my President. Sorry.