All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat pushing for a new tax on Wall Street transactions, is calling for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to lose his job.

Dubbing White House economic adviser Larry Summers "an adviser from Wall Street" and Geithner – who he calls "Timmy" – "a Treasury Secretary from Wall Street," DeFazio suggested on MSNBC that the two men don't prioritize the best interests of average Americans.

"We think it is time, maybe, that we turn our focus to Main Street -- we reclaim some of the unspent [TARP] funds, we reclaim some of the funds that are being paid back, which will not be paid back in full, and we use it to put people back to work," he said, adding that Geithner and Summers "don't like that idea."

"They want to keep the TARP money either to continue to bail out Wall Street if there are future problems, or maybe…to pay down the deficit," he said. "That's absurd."

Asked if Geithner should stay in his job, DeFazio said no.

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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said at the The First Draft of History conference in Washington, D.C. Thursday that the goal is U.S. fiscal policy "should never be to save people from their mistakes."

He said it is important to "create a system that can withstand their failure, so you can let them fail" and then control the damage.

The treasury secretary told Chris Wallace of Fox News that it is important to preserve "the competitive market that allows for innovation" – but said that doing so "doesn't work so well, as we learned, if you don't put in strong standards to protect consumers."

He said the administration was seeking to establish "sensibly designed stronger standards, enforced across the country" as well as "constrain excess leverage in the financial system."

Though unemployment remains "appallingly high" and "we're nowhere close to declaring victory," Geithner said he sees "tentative signs of growth" in the economy.

"We’re only just beginning to see the signs of recovery," he said.

Geithner said the most important decision the administration has made so far on monetary policy "has been to come together early" with the rest of the world and "agree on a common strategy and execute it."

He said the "classic mistake" of waiting too long to act and then being tentative had thus been avoided.

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State and local housing agencies would receive up to $35 billion under a plan being considered by the Obama administration, according to a report in Monday's Wall Street Journal.

Under the plan, which could be announced as early as this week, the federal government would buy up to $20 million of new housing bonds in order to relieve pressure from government-run housing finance agencies. The specific buyers of the bonds include the Treasury Department and government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Another $15 billion would be available to help the agencies provide low-rate mortgages to first-time and low-income home buyers.

These agencies have been especially hurt by the economic downturn. Officials in the administration are already worried that they have stopped making new loans.

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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today said the U.S. government is "not proposing an ongoing government role in setting policy and compensation" – even as he and the Obama administration call for legislation allowing shareholders to apply (nonbinding) pressure over executive pay.

"We do not believe it's appropriate for the government to set caps on compensation," he said. "We are not going to prescribe detailed prescriptive rules for compensation. We think all those things would be ineffective, could be counterproductive in some ways."

Watch:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said today that General Motors and the American auto industry will require "very substantial restructuring," and that the Obama administration is prepared to help make that process work.

"We're prepared to explore all options to make that possible, but our test is, what's going to work? What's going to allow them to emerge from this strong enough so they can survive without assistance from the government on an ongoing basis?" Geithner said on CBS News' Face The Nation.

One option he did not rule out is a controlled bankruptcy for GM.

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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said today it was too early in the economic recovery process to tell if he was going to have to ask Congress for more stimulus money.

Appearing on CBS' Face The Nation, Geithner also said that progress toward correcting the economy "is not going to be even. We're going to have fits and starts. There will be a period where it feels very bad and uncertain.”

Geithner was asked by host Bob Schieffer, "Do you think you're going to have to ask for more in the way of a stimulus?”

“I can't make that judgment at this time,” Geithner said. “Our first priority is to move on the programs that Congress has passed and put those in place as quickly as possible.”

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White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed this morning on "The Early Show" what Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's told Katie Couric Wednesday night -- that the administration may ask heads of bailed banks to resign.

"We have to make sure that people feel comfortable that you have a plan to get your bank of your business out of trouble. Sometimes that means new leadership as a CEO," Gibbs told Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez.

Rodriguez also asked Gibbs about President Obama's visit with Queen Elizabeth II and the iPod he presented to her.

"I think it went over well," Gibbs said. "He was excited to give it to her. We have been talking about it for a few days and hopefully she will enjoy it," he said. Gibbs also noted that the president's children were interested in the royal meeting.

Asked what tangible initiatives the president hopes to achieve at the G20 Summit today, Gibbs said Mr. Obama had three major goals. One to "meet the dropping demand in our economy with stimulus and recovery", two, to put "concrete rules of the road together to make sure this crisis never happens again," and finally, "to manage an agreement among nations to help emerging economies."

You can watch the whole interview .

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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the White House is pleased with yesterday's performance on Wall Street following the release of details of the Treasury Department's toxic asset plan, but cautioned against reading too much into a single day's trading.

"We don't spend a lot of time worrying or looking at what happens each day in the market," Gibbs told Early Show anchor Harry Smith. "Instead the president wants to feel confident and give the American people confidence that what we're putting in place will bring our economy back [in the] long-term, create jobs and lay a path towards prosperity again."

Gibbs also didn't characterize the market's upbeat mood as "vindication" for a White House and Treasury official that have been feeling lots of heat of late.

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On the sixty-third day of his presidency, President Obama called on companies to come up with advancements in renewable energy to help the country get through the recession.

"At this moment of necessity, we need you," Mr. Obama said during an speech at the White House. "We need some inventiveness. Your country needs you to create new jobs and lead new industries. Your country needs you to mount a historic effort to end, once and for all, our dependence on foreign oil."

Mr. Obama also praised the bank rescue plan unveiled by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner today after a meeting with Geithner and his other economic advisers.

"The good news is that we have one more critical element in our recovery, but we've still got a long way to go, and we've got a lot of work to do. But I'm very confident that, with the team that we've got assembled, we're going to be able to make it happen," he said.

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President Obama today said he was "very confident" that the plan announced by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to remove toxic assets from the financial system will have the desired effects of unlocking the credit markets.

Mr. Obama called the plan "absolutely critical" in his administration’s effort to combat the economic crisis and he touted the benefits of the public-private partnership the administration has outlined to acquire the assets.

"This morning, Secretary Geithner announced the latest element in this multi-pronged approach, and that is a mechanism that he… has initiated in order to allow banks to take some of their bad assets off their books, sell them into a market, but do so in a way that doesn't just obligate taxpayers to buy at whatever price they're willing to sell these assets, instead involves a public-private partnership that allows market participants who have every interest in making a profit to accurately price these assets so that the taxpayers share in the upside, as well as the downside," Mr. Obama said after his daily economic briefing, which was attended by Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The president also today used an analogy he's used before. He said the financial rescue plan, housing plans and the stimulus plan he signed last month were all "legs in the stool" to bring economic recovery. He also pointed to what he said were "glimmers of hope" in the housing market, which many point to as the key to overcoming the crisis.

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