Former
Treasury Secretary Recounts Difficult Period; A Few Regrets
By DEBORAH
SOLOMON
May 10,
2014 4:34 p.m. ET
The Wall
Street Journal
WASHINGTON—Former
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whose time in Washington was often colored
by accusations he was too close to Wall Street and did little to help Main
Street, uses his 538-page book "Stress Test" to largely defend and
explain the decisions he made during the financial crisis.
"The
inconvenient truth of financial-crisis response is that the actions that feel
right are often wrong," he writes.
Mr.
Geithner, who was tapped by President Barack Obama to lead the Treasury and
before that was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, says he was
right to avoid the populist push for blood, including refusing to upend bonus
payments to employees of American International Group Inc. AIG +1.09% And he says there was little reason to take a
tougher approach to the big banks by nationalizing them and handing the reins
to the government.
At the same
time, Mr. Geithner says the U.S.
should have done more to save Lehman Brothers and criticizes members of
Congress for polluting the 2010 Dodd-Frank law with unwise provisions.