{"id":187827,"date":"2011-02-21T21:24:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T02:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/02\/21\/now-we-know-what-gives-timothy-geithner-an-erection\/"},"modified":"2011-02-21T21:24:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-22T02:24:00","slug":"now-we-know-what-gives-timothy-geithner-an-erection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/02\/21\/now-we-know-what-gives-timothy-geithner-an-erection\/","title":{"rendered":"Now We Know What Gives Timothy Geithner an Erection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Noam Scheiber <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/article\/economy\/magazine\/83176\/timothy-geithner-treasury-secretary\">interviewed Geithner<\/a>, and gave us this gem:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>I asked Geithner if he had a grand vision for the postcrisis landscape\u2014for, say, a less bloated financial sector with a smaller role in the economy\u2014and a map for how to get there. Could he be a figure like George Marshall, who helped win the World War and then remade Europe so that it couldn\u2019t happen again?<\/p>\n<p>Geithner hunched his shoulders, pressed his knees together, and lifted his heels up off the ground\u2014an almost childlike expression of glee. \u201cWe\u2019re going, like, existential,\u201d he said. He told me he subscribes to the view that the world is on the cusp of a major \u201cfinancial deepening\u201d: As developing economies in the most populous countries mature, they will demand more and increasingly sophisticated financial services, the same way they demand cars for their growing middle classes and information technology for their corporations. If that\u2019s true, then we should want U.S. banks positioned to compete abroad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t have any enthusiasm for \u2026 trying to shrink the relative importance of the financial system in our economy as a test of reform, because we have to think about the fact that we operate in the broader world,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the same thing for Microsoft or anything else. We want U.S. firms to benefit from that.\u201d He continued: \u201cNow financial firms are different because of the risk, but you can contain that through regulation.\u201d This was the purpose of the recent financial reform, he said. In effect, Geithner was arguing that we should be as comfortable linking the fate of our economy to Wall Street as to automakers or Silicon Valley.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And then he smoked a cigarette, and asked if was good for me.<\/p>\n<p>H\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/news.firedoglake.com\/2011\/02\/14\/geithner-i-for-one-welcome-our-new-financial-overlords\/\">David Dayen<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sorry for that image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Noam Scheiber interviewed Geithner, and gave us this gem: I asked Geithner if he had a grand vision for the postcrisis landscape\u2014for, say, a less bloated financial sector with a smaller role in the economy\u2014and a map for how to get there. Could he be a figure like George Marshall, who helped win the World &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1010,970,973,985,979,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-corruption","category-economy","category-regulation","category-wanker","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}