Just in Case You Were Wondering How Tied Into Wall Street Geithner Is....

The New York Times has a rundown of his ties, and the behavior that this has engendered:

Timothy F. Geithner, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank oversaw many of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions, stunned the group with the audacity of his answer. He proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system, according to two participants, including Michele Davis, then an assistant Treasury secretary.

The proposal quickly died amid protests that it was politically untenable because it could put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.

“People thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of out there,’ ” said John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, who heard about the idea afterward. Mr. Geithner says, “I don’t remember a serious discussion on that proposal then.”

But in the 10 months since then, the government has in many ways embraced his blue-sky prescription. Step by step, through an array of new programs, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have assumed an unprecedented role in the banking system, using unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, to try to save the nation’s financiers from their own mistakes.

And more often than not, Mr. Geithner has been a leading architect of those bailouts, the activist at the head of the pack. He was the federal regulator most willing to “push the envelope,” said H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent Wall Street lawyer who spoke frequently with Mr. Geithner.

There is no failure in Wall Street that Geithner does not think should be subsidized by the taxpayer, or as Yves Smith says, "Geithner is a creature of the financial establishment."

What is important here is that this was page 1 on the New York Times, which is a recognition by the main stream media that this is a problem, and they used his calendar while President of the New York Fed, showing private meetings and lunches with Wall Street executives, as a part of this.

The use of the calendar is very competent shoe leather journalism, and as Ms. Smith notes, it is exceedingly rare to see it used in a story.

If you scroll down toward the bottom of the story, you discover that the bill drafted to give the Treasury the authority to take over large institutions was drafted by Wall Street lobbyists, literally.

The draft bill sent to Congress sent contained metadata that showed it was from a law firm that represents lobbyists.

Seriously, if the problem is that the banking industry and its ethos are dysfunctional, and I believe this to be the case, you could not find a worse steward of this crisis.

And the MSM is beginning to notice,