A Closer Look At Treasury Sec. Geithner

Unflappable, International, And Up Early: The Man With One Of America's Toughest Jobs

(AP)  In any other year, Timothy Geithner already would have spent a week at tennis camp in Florida, sharpening his skills and kicking back with a group of friends that includes the mentor who helped put him on the fast track to the top of the Treasury Department.

Instead, Barack Obama's 47-year-old treasury secretary is in his office before dawn most days, grabbing lunch at his desk and juggling three Blackberries as he tries to untangle the wreckage of a financial system gone sour.

He's been pilloried for lousing up his tax returns, battered by bad reviews of his earliest policy pronouncements and pelted with resignation calls from congressional critics.

Through it all, Geithner has displayed the same intense focus and unflappable demeanor that made him an obvious choice when no-drama Obama went hunting for a compatible personality to manage the biggest problem confronting the nation.

"Nothing has seemed to blow him off course," says Lee Sachs, a friend who worked with Geithner at Treasury during the Clinton years and is back in the department.

Geithner was a twentysomething whiz kid when he first came knocking on the department's doors in 1988. He had outgrown his first job as a grunt at Kissinger Associates but he wasn't ready to be one of its big-money rainmakers.

So Geithner signed on as a civil servant in the Treasury's trade office during the Reagan administration. Within a decade, he was on track to become the boss of the man who had hired him. Within two, he was fending off Obama's entreaties to become treasury secretary.

Geithner's fans say one key to his quick rise to the top is his uncanny ability to see around corners. It also could help explain why he was so reluctant to take on a job that so far has been nothing but one long stress test, a phrase he would much rather see applied to troubled banks than his own career.

Geithner had been immersed in the unfolding economic crisis last fall as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and he knew better than almost anyone how bad things really were. But even he couldn't have predicted what a brutal slog it would be for him personally.

Treasury secretaries normally aren't part of the zeitgeist. Just weeks into the job, Geithner already is "Saturday Night Live" sketch material. (To the amusement of his wife and kids.)

With most of the department's top jobs still unfilled since the presidential transition, those who are at work there joke about being hooked up to food intravenously and walking the halls tethered to an IV bag hanging on a pole.

Geithner hasn't had a full day off since he took the job two months ago. His family still is 200 miles away in New York. The overlord who will have his signature imprinted on U.S. currency is bunking with friends.

And he and his one-time mentor, Lawrence Summers, have managed to get in just one game of tennis. The man who loves any kind of sport - snowboarding, basketball, running and more - largely settles for a predawn workout in the basement gym at Treasury.

On a rare overnight trip home recently, Geithner spent much of the time prepping for last week's rollout of his bank rescue plan.

That, at least, got a thumbs-up from Wall Street and helped to ease the sense of a Treasury Department under siege after the blowup over big bonuses going to executives at American International Group Inc., the insurer that has soaked up billions in federal bailout money. Geithner caught much of the blame for letting the payments go through, although he insisted he was powerless to block them.

The AIG furor wasn't the first major bump in Geithner's tempestuous tenure at Treasury. A month earlier, his awkward introduction of the bank rescue plan's sketchy framework sent global financial markets tumbling, and the letdown spawned talk about a lack of confidence in a Cabinet member who looks so much younger than his years.

"Shock and uh," one critic called it.

With his youthful looks and curly locks, Geithner brings to mind Doogie Howser, the boy-genius doctor of a '90s TV show, more than the outsized personalities who typically have presided at Treasury.

His mind seems to race ahead of his mouth, which plays catch-up by blurting out phrases such as "majoremergingmarketcountries" and "toolstomitigatesystemicrisk."

His loafers shift forward, then back as he fields incoming fire from cantankerous legislators at hearings, his head slowly nodding three or four times to show he gets it, then bobbing up and down more quickly.

He's on "thin ice," one GOP critic says. "Shaky ground," warns another. "He should go," says a third.

Obama, for a time, felt compelled to dole out a daily dose of confidence in his treasury secretary to tamp down calls for his head.

Although the criticism eased after Geithner released details of the bank plan, his every move will be under a high-resolution microscope at this coming week's economic summit in London. He already is weakened politically and it's not clear how much margin for error he has left.

But former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, one of the wise men to whom the treasury secretary turns for outside advice, said missteps are inevitable given the demands of the job.

"He is making decisions in areas where if you get it right 60-70 percent of the time, you are extraordinary," says Greenspan. "That means you are wrong 30-40 percent of the time."

At Treasury, Greenspan said, it's not enough to make broad policy decisions and leave it to others to work out the details.

"If you're not down in the weeds in this type of operation, you're going to make some terrible mistakes," he said.

To Geithner's harshest critics, there already have been too many mistakes.

"You know, I'd like to send a little message to Mr. Geithner to not sell his home - his $1.6 million home in New York - because I'd like for him to stay there and not come to be the secretary of the treasury," Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., sniped last week.

--

Timothy Franz Geithner's birth certificate reads New York City but he's truly a global production.

With a father who worked abroad for the U.S. Agency for International Development and then the Ford Foundation, Geithner lived in Zambia and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as a child. By junior high, he was in India. By high school, he was in Thailand.

As it happens, Geithner's father, Peter, at one point oversaw a program developed by Obama's mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro, when she worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia. The two met at least once in Jakarta, according to the foundation.

At his Treasury swearing-in ceremony in January, Geithner paid tribute to his father for showing him the world as a child and allowing him see America "through the eyes of others."

"It was that experience - seeing firsthand the extraordinary influence of American policy on the world - that led me to work in government," he said.

An interest in public service also is part of his pedigree. A grandfather served as an adviser to President Dwight Eisenhower. An uncle advised the presidential campaigns of George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller, and held positions in the departments of Justice, State and Defense and as a U.N. ambassador.

At Dartmouth College, Geithner avoided the fraternity culture, immersing himself in Asian studies. Friends were more likely to peg him for a future diplomat than financial wizard. Geithner studied both Japanese and Chinese, going abroad for a time to hone his language skills in Beijing.

"He really nailed Chinese in a way that was quite out of the ordinary," recalls John Fanestil, his sophomore roommate.

It was at Dartmouth that Geithner met Carole Sonneberg, now a social worker. The two were married at his parents' summer home on Cape Cod, with Geithner's father serving as best man. They have two children in high school, freshman Ben and senior Elise, who are more likely to see their dad on TV than in person.

"I talk to them many, many times a day and try to keep in touch," Geithner said in a recent TV interview that spoke tellingly of the distance between them.

--

After his early stint at Henry Kissinger's consulting firm, Geithner got hired at the Treasury by William Barreda, who says that if he hadn't retired when he did in 1997, Geithner soon would have been his boss.

He likes Geithner anyway, and says "you'll have trouble finding anyone who dislikes him."

When Robert Rubin took over as treasury secretary in 1995, Barreda remembers Rubin going around the room during a meeting to ask each person's background, and getting back puffed-up credentials from virtually everyone.

Then came Geithner, who confessed that prior to joining Treasury, "mainly, I was in high school."

[realnews12]

People like you should be stripped of all rights to respond. Did he have a typo,

Posted by poeticaintit at 11:35 AM : Mar 29, 2009

Typical fascist response. No, it wasn't a typo; he claimed Geithner was "thirty-something". Clearly he didn't read the article and was just delivering the typical right-wing talking points.

[stevador39]

Nice puff piece.

[aheadace]

The only time debt matters to the people in the US is when they cant pay it they do think to much when they are making the debt and this is when they should think but the only thing they think about is if they can pay at the time never thinking of the time the item is to be paid in full

[poeticaintit]

Posted by hawksprings at 5:08 PM : Mar 28, 2009

Geithner is 47. Shows you didn't read the article, so your criticism of it is invalid.
Posted by realnews12

People like you should be stripped of all rights to respond. Did he have a typo, as well, that you could have commented on to make you seem more credible. Go back to the paper...leave the zingers to the adults with IQs over 50.

[poeticaintit]

Poor little Tim Tim....life was soooooooo much easier when he was evading taxes.

[kaylag04]

This fills me with unbridled optimism! If Geithner can be treasury secretary, well then, so can I! Its too late to cheat on my taxes this year, but next year, I'll get that qualification taken care of, and I'm in!

[realnews12]

He's just a thirty-something, curly haired whiz-kid who doesn't pay his taxes.

Posted by hawksprings at 5:08 PM : Mar 28, 2009

Geithner is 47. Shows you didn't read the article, so your criticism of it is invalid.

[creeper00]

Posted by walterjesse at 7:24 AM : Mar 29, 2009

Thunderous applause!!!

[pensacola8-2009]

Geinther is very capable and qualified for his position.

His critics are clearly corruptible congressional personalities who don't want to see a change in regulation policy that is in the best interests of this country.

I charge that the GOP is a party of the past and obsolete.

I declare that younger citizens serving the critical positions in governement have more current and complete education than older traditional citizens.

I call for a generation of Cold War moguls to step aside and let the country recover under the hands of more ethical minded and educated Democrats.

[Rubeem]

So now BO wants to give Geithner more power (as requested by TG). Is that so BO can't be held responsible for the mess that will be a result of the tail wagging the dog?!?!? OMG ! ! ! ! !

The headline read:
"President Obama said today he hopes it "doesn't take too long to convince Congress" to give his administration unprecedented new powers to take over and stabilize ailing nonbank institutions such as bailed-out insurance giant American International Group. The president sounded as if he were in a hurry to win the expanded authority just hours after Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined the request to Congress."

[walterjesse]

Geithner, like Obama, is in over his head. They are trying to reverse the economic implosion that is the result of a six decade long cancer, and without reversing this cancer, the implosion will continue no matter how much money is thrown around and no matter how many directions it is thrown in.

The cancer is the politics of fear, begun by Truman, and cultivated by presidents, political parties, news media, religious pariahs, market titans, and a general population that long ago lost its taste for history, and hasn't for a century loved the history of political or economic theory. When you couple the culture of political fear, with the greed unavoidable in capitalism, and then build an empire on that fear and greed marriage, the offspring will always be led by conspicuous consumption. Glamorous wastefulness is the most worshipped god in the culture. Watch Oprah.

The current economic implosion is irreversible as long as the political culture of fear remains coupled with capitalism's greed. The only offspring they can any longer produce, besides the conspicuous consumption of the celebrity classes, is cynicism and insubstantial hope, the twin gods worshipped by the dispossessed. Who cares if the republican idiots worship cynicism more, and the democratic idiots worship insubstantial hope more right now? Eight years ago those same spectator citizens worshipped the opposite gods. Big deal.

The politics we need is the politics of building healthy dependencies within the circles of our personally known neighbors, relatives, friends, and associates. These dependencies make possible healthy, critical, penetrating, thoughtful dialogue, and they have little patience for the nonsensical name-calling and insult trading so popular among the worshippers of insubstantial hope and cynicism. Insubstantial hope and cynicism are unavoidable where mere spectator citizens gather; thoughtful citizens do not expect corporate capitalism to create intelligent information media; their media are devoted to propagandizing on behalf of corporate greed.

Good luck informing yourself with a little help from your friends, neighbors, relatives, and other associates, because, they, too, fondly cling to their silly spectator citizenship. Be careful. Go slowly. Build on what works, study what doesn't work, overcome errors, especially errors of thought habits.

[regret-my-vote]

I am concerned as everyone that we are overspending in a time when we should pay off our debts and save. The first package for spending put through by Bushwas to (I may be wrong) save our banks. Maybe it is naive of me to believe this but I do. Now the 2nd and 3rd packages were filled with ridiculous spending that made no sense to me as to how this could save our economy.No one even read it--that's their excuse?We have to elect people from any party that can use common sense and stop the spending.The mainstream press didn't do their job(the 4th arm of government?) and show us who Mr. O. really was.The American people are waking up.

[creeper00]

Geithner was appointed to carry out Barack Obama's continued transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich via bank and insurance company bailouts for those privileged companies who supported Obama during the election. NEVER forget that Obama's second-largest contributor was AIG.

In October of 2008, Barack Obama said of AIG executives already receiving bonuses for trashing their company, "Treasury should demand that money back, and those executives should be fired." Now he's waffling about signing the bill Congress passed that would strip executives of those bonuses. With Obama, it's important to pay attention to what he does, not to what he says.

Mr. Geithner and Mr. Obama are about to run into a little more opposition than they're facing here. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's plan to spend zillions in an "economic stimulus" plan in Europe which is similar to ours has has been shot down by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with the Spanish and the French right behind her..

Evidently the British are no longer able to think for themselves. They just follow the U.S. president blindly. Happily, the rest of Europe does not.

And speaking of those Spaniards, they're looking at criminal charges against a bunch of Bush administration officials. How pathetic is that? They have the stones to do what we should have four years ago.

We are a nation of weaklings...a herd of sheeple who willingly accept a tax-dodging Secretary of the Treasury because the inexperienced, unaccomplished messiah in the White House is telling us to.

We have gotten exactly what we deserved. Incompetence and corruption fit right into a nation whose citizens have abrogated their critical thinking skills.

[skyk-2009]

HINT: they are spending your money and paying off the international bankers with it . and are subjagating us to the UN with the cap and trade. WAKEUP
Posted by philabias at 11:33 PM : Mar 28, 2009

First of all there is a MAJOR difference between what Bush was doing, getting us INTO this mess and what Obama is trying to do, get us out of the mess. When Bush and the Republican's took office we HAD no problems such as this. They took over a nation with a Balanced Budget and Surplus. When people from the center and left shouted to high heaven when the Republican's again started with the Trickle Down Garbage they ignored them. So the FIRST place you start is with that POLICY and THAT PARTY! We must NEVER again buy into the Voodoo Economics they sell. The President was handed a VERY powerful MANDATE to take the nation in a different direction! He was also handed the worst economic meltdown in our history. Now, since we can NOT return to the past and since he IS taking the nation in a different direction, we should support him in that effort. To have allowed these Banks to fail would MOST certainly have caused a complete collapse of the entire system. Millions upon Millions of American's would have lost their life savings with NO HOPE to recover them (the FDIC is already in trouble and that would have bankrupted that system). No one knows for certain if the President can salvage the economic system but I believe he can. What we must NEVER forget is the INSANITY of De-Regulation and the Rich CEO's Policing themselves. We'll get out of this but we MUST learn from it.

[skyk-2009]

Ah no... he looks like the punk on the block everbody beat the krap out of on a daily basis.

Since when did the DNC start writing articles for CBS? Krappy spin job guys!
Posted by far_point200 at 10:14 PM : Mar 28, 2009

Typical ditto head! IF they don't agree with the FAILED policies of the past they are just stooges of the DNC! LOL It's no wonder you people supported and voted for the Worst in our history! LOL

[skyk-2009]

- You are so negative. If you have an opinon why don't you set it forth instead of criticizing everyone else?
Posted by vancouverboo at 6:48 PM : Mar 28, 2009

I GAVE that opinion in November and that Opinion, in addition to the VAST majority of the rest of the Nation is being completely IGNORED, as usual by the Radical Right!!

[skyk-2009]

Crooks are always unflappable, look who he works for....that's right...coummunist dictator Obama of the socialist party is "TOO" stupid to be a crook. Why do you think that President Pelosi really runs the country and Obama is just her stupid puppet????
Posted by dongo3 at 1:35 AM : Mar 29, 2009

Have any of you out there heard of any law that the Treasury Secretary Violated? All I've seen or heard has been that he failed to properly report on his Income Tax. He paid the taxes and penalties as required by the Law and Congress approved his appointment on a BY-PARTISAN BASIS!! Now maybe in Bumpkinville he's guilty because he doesn't play in your Institution but that doesn't count out here in the real world. Seriously pal you need to take off the hood and sheet and try the AMERICAN way of doing things.

[philabias]

I have read a lot of responses and I am amazed.. look folks calling each other names over bush and Obama is silly. here try this. Bush was told to bailout by the international bankers and he did. Obama carried it to an extreme and is spending more money than america has spent since it was a country combined 1 year = 224 years
I here some call bush stupid and i here others call Obama stupid. But since its your great grandchildrens money they are spendingthen I guess that you would really be the stupid ones . HINT: they are spending your money and paying off the international bankers with it . and are subjagating us to the UN with the cap and trade. WAKEUP

[philabias]

ALright America since you cant figure it out i will explain in small words.Geithner a banker, Heres how it works the international bankers refuse to give loansbecause they made a lot of bad loans. tell Obama to pay them back ( OR ELSE )for there destruction of the AMERICAN economy and Obama fills his administration with everty member of the council for foreighn relations ( this group was set up in 1921 by John D rockofeller and JP morgan Both international Bankers to exert control over the government and they hijacked it in 1933. So the crisis was made up to sell us out to the NEW WORLD ORDER
And just the other day David rockofeller said that the crisis had worked very well and we would soon have no other choice but to compitulate. DO SOME READING AMERICA THEY ARE SELLING YOU INTO DEBT THAT CAN NOT BE REPAID and you are dumb enough to help them...

[far_point200]

"With his youthful looks and curly locks, Geithner brings to mind Doogie Howser, the boy-genius doctor of a '90s TV show, more than the outsized personalities who typically have presided at Treasury."

Ah no... he looks like the punk on the block everbody beat the krap out of on a daily basis.

Since when did the DNC start writing articles for CBS? Krappy spin job guys!