Tag Archives: Secretary of the Treasury

Why Does the Media Ignore Timothy Geithner’s Disastrous Leadership of the NY Fed?

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

Remember nine months ago when Timothy Geithner assured us that it was “extremely unlikely” he would take a position on Wall Street?

The media meme when Geithner announced that he was stepping down as Treasury Secretary and taking a position as a “senior fellow” with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was what a superior human he was for not taking a job with Wall Street.  The “extremely unlikely” (to no one’s surprise) was announced nine months later.  The private equity firm Warburg Pincus has hired Geithner as its President.

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Declaring the Grand Bargain Dead Is Premature

By Joe Firestone

Stories in The Washington Post and the New York Times have some in the blogosphere proclaiming that it’s time to celebrate the death of the Grand Bargain, and others at least raising a question about its death. I’ll go on record as saying that celebrating its death is definitely premature.

It is so because we’ve yet to go through the budget or continuing resolution-passing activities coming up in September, and also have yet to go through the debt ceiling conflict to come in October. Mainstream Washington commentators believe John Boehner is determined to avoid a government shutdown crisis of the budget/CR conflict and that one or the other will be passed before October 1. Assuming they’re right, that still leaves the matter of the debt ceiling “crisis,” which the same commentators are saying will happen because Boehner has to promise his tea party caucus a chance to coerce the Administration, if he’s going to get their acquiescence on the budget/government shutdown matter.

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Jack Lew: Avoiding Default Is Your Responsibility Too

By Joe Firestone

With the end of the Summer break, now comes the return of the debt limit dance. From Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s letter to John Boehner:

“Congress should act as soon as possible to protect America’s good credit by extending normal borrowing authority well before any risk of default becomes imminent.

“Based on our latest estimates extraordinary measures are projected to be exhausted in the middle of October. At that point, the United States will have reached the limit of its borrowing authority, and Treasury would be left to fund the government with only the cash we have on hand on any given day, The cash balance at that time is currently forecasted to be approximately $50 billion.

“. . . A cash balance of approximately $50 Billion would be insufficient to cover net expenditures for an extended period of time. And, on certain days, net expenditures could exceed such a cash balance.

“. . . Protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is the responsibility of Congress because only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority . . .“

OK. So, only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority. But it doesn’t follow from that fact that protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is solely the responsibility of Congress.

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Can the Federal Reserve Really Refuse To Accept and To Credit A Platinum Coin Deposited By the US Mint?

By Joe Firestone

The issue of whether the Fed can really refuse to accept and credit a deposit of a platinum coin with its face value, is being raised frequently on blog posts about Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) and the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC). In the past, I’ve argued that the Fed cannot; and the final decision on taking the TDC off the table was actually made by the President, and not by Chairman Bernanke.

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