Panel Receives Timothy Geithner's Call Logs
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week received a list that will capture eyes from Wall Street to Washington.
Timothy Geithner’s call log during the tightest grips of the financial crisis show the then-New York Federal Reserve Board chairman made calls calls to U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Obama transition adviser Lee Sachs and Warren Buffet.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld also spoke with Geithner. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke got calls, as did former SEC Chairman Christopher Cox and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Some of these individuals were called several times in the fall of 2008 as Congress executed a $700 billion bank bailout.
The 50-page document, obtained by POLITICO, is only a sliver of the quarter-million documents that were received as part of Chairman Ed Towns’ (D-N.Y.) subpoena for the Jan. 27 hearing.
The inquiry pits a Democratic chairman – with his fiery Ranking Republican Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) – against a key member of the Obama administration.
The call-log – which runs from Sept. 14, 2008 until Dec. 31, 2008 – is likely to garner much attention both in New York and inside the Beltway.
The hearing is centering around bipartisan criticism that Geithner asked AIG not to disclose the payment of credit-default-swap contracts – pricey insurance agreements that bet against a bank’s failure – to giant financial institutions after a bailout. Geithner has denied such claims.
Republicans, as well as plenty of critics in the financial world, will be combing through this list to see whether he had more involvement in that decision – which the New York Fed says was handled by lower level officials – than has been acknowledged.
Sources: Politico, AP
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