TPMDC Timothy Geithner: October 2011
Ben Bernanke
Congressional Dysfunction Begins To Spook Old Pros
U.S. Capitol building
Congress has always been Washington's whipping boy, particularly near election time. The antics get sillier, the pace shifts from glacial to gridlock, and the frustrated public gets daily reminders that lawmakers are often too mired in politics to function in the national interest.
That's not news.
What is news is that this time it's starting to scare the pros.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Ben Bernanke, Budget, Congress, Debt Ceiling, Deficit, Economy, Eric Cantor, Government Shutdown, Recession, Robert Gates, Stimulus, Timothy Geithner, Unemployment
Timothy Geithner
Geithner Dodges On Sympathy For Occupy Wall St, Expresses Shock At Wall Street Antipathy To Obama
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told an audience of the country's elite Wednesday that he sympathizes with the underlying loss of faith anti-Wall Street protesters and other Americans have in the country's ruling class -- though not specifically for the growing "Occupy Wall Street" protest movement itself. But at the same time he expressed astonishment and dismay at Wall Street's loss of faith in President Obama and the administration.
The juxtaposition is striking, and illustrates how at odds the anti-Wall Street movement is with the administration.
"I feel a lot of sympathy for what you might describe as the general sense among Americans as whether we've lost the sense of possibility and whether after a pretty bad lost decade in terms of income growth or fiscal responsibility...followed by a devastating crisis, huge loss of faith in public institutions, people do wonder whether we have the ability to do things that can help the average sense of opportunity in the country," Geithner said at The Atlantic's Ideas Forum, just a few blocks from both the U.S. Capitol and the White House.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Topics: Barack Obama, Financial Reform, Occupy Wall Street, Timothy Geithner, Wall Street
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