Not only does Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner need a serious education in monetary policy and economics, but he could stand to have his mother wash his mouth out with soap too.
According to a new book by Treasury Department Inspector General Neil Barofsky titled Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, Geithner gets pretty hot headed in some interaction concerning the TARP fiasco that took place a few years back.
“I never would have imagined that one day one of the most powerful government officials in the world would be dropping f-bombs on me.”
In the particular exchange in question between Geithner and Barofsky here’s what was written:
“I said that I thought our capacity as a nation to deal with what could be a continuing financial crisis was being undermined by a loss of faith in government,” Barofsky writes. “Then I said that the current loss of government credibility could be traced to Treasury’s mishandling of TARP.”
“Geithner got dramatic,” Barofsky writes. And — according to the accounts published in the book — Geithner was quick to call out Barofsky’s bluff.
“‘Neil, you think I don’t hear those criticisms? I hear them,” the book reads. “’And each one, they cut me,’ he said, pausing and then making an emphatic cutting motion with one hand as he said ‘like a knife.’”
Barofsky then appeared to take up the matter with Herb Allison, a subordinate of the secretary to confirm exactly what his statement meant.
“I am not suggesting that the secretary has failed in transparency, I am stating it. Mr. Secretary, you’ve failed to be sufficiently transparent, and that is one of the reasons why people are so angry. But you can still fix it,” Barofsky remembers saying.
“Neil, I have been the most f**king transparent secretary of the Treasury in this country’s entire f**king history!” he recalls Geithner yelling at him.
“‘No one has ever made the banks disclose the type of sh*t that I made them disclose after the stress tests. No one! And now you’re saying that I haven’t been f**king transparent?’”
Barofsky recalls that, at that point, “Geithner looked as if he was going to get out of his chair and throttle me.”
He claims that finally things calmed down and that Geithner gave him an “almost demonic smile.” “It was the weirdest meeting of my life.”
I’m sure it was. The problem is that we have men like Tim Geithner in office. I would have called him out too and told him he wasn’t transparent and if it came to duking it out simply because of pointing out the obvious, then it just would have been that way.
Geithner is like the rest of the Obama administration. They are foul mouthed thugs who seek to intimidate people and then they pitch temper tantrums like a bunch of children.
We need adults in government who are responsible with their policies, as well as, their language. Since Geithner has demonstrated that he cannot control policy or his mouth, he has also demonstrated his inability to hold the office he does and should have been removed a long time ago.
