47 Facts About Timothy Geithner

Timothy Franz Geithner is a former American central banker who served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013.

Timothy Geithner was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2009, following service in the Clinton administration.

At the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner helped manage crises involving Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the American International Group; as Treasury Secretary, he oversaw allocation of $350 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, enacted during the previous administration in response to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Timothy Geithner managed the administration's efforts to restructure regulation of the nation's financial system, attempts to spur recovery of the mortgage market and the automobile industry, demands for protectionism, tax reform, and negotiations with foreign governments on global finance issues.

Timothy Geithner was born in Manhattan, New York, to Peter Franz Timothy Geithner and Deborah Moore.

Timothy Geithner spent most of his childhood living abroad, including in Zimbabwe; Zambia; India; and Thailand, where he completed high school at the International School Bangkok.

Timothy Geithner studied Mandarin at Peking University in 1981, and at Beijing Normal University in 1982.

Timothy Geithner married Carole Marie Sonnenfeld, his classmate at Dartmouth, on June 8,1985, at his parents' summer home in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Timothy Geithner is a licensed clinical social worker and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at George Washington University School of Medicine, where she teaches listening skills to medical students.

Timothy Geithner is the author of a coming-of-age children's novel about grief.

Timothy Geithner's father, Albert Sonnenfeld, was a professor of French and Comparative Literature at Princeton University and a food critic; her mother, Portia, died when Carole was 25, shortly after she was married.

Timothy Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates in Washington, DC, from 1985 to 1988, when he joined the International Affairs division of the US Treasury Department.

Timothy Geithner served as an attache at the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo, then as deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy, senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs, and assistant secretary for international affairs.

Timothy Geithner was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, who are widely considered to have been his mentors.

In 2001, Timothy Geithner left the Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department.

Timothy Geithner was director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003.

In October 2003, Timothy Geithner was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In 2005, Timothy Geithner expressed concern over Wall Street trading in financial derivatives, which would ultimately contribute to the spread of the late 2000s financial crisis, though he did not pursue major reforms.

In 2004, Timothy Geithner called on banks to "build a sufficient cushion against adversity", though in May 2007, he expressed support for the Basel II accord, which critics, including Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chairperson Sheila Bair, argued would reduce the amount of capital banks would be required to hold to guard against losses.

In mid-March 2008, together with then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner arranged the rescue and fire sale of Bear Stearns, which was at risk of bankruptcy, to JPMorgan Chase for $2 per share.

Three days later, Timothy Geithner convened a meeting of Wall Street executives, Secretary Paulson, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox to review exposure to Lehman's fortunes and discuss a possible liquidation of Lehman.

Timothy Geithner indicated that the government would not save Lehman and urged the executives to cooperate on an industry solution, warning that the crisis could spread to their own firms should a deal not be reached.

Government officials believed Lehman's collapse would be less dangerous than that of Bear Stearns, though Timothy Geithner sought to avoid that contingency nonetheless, citing the increase in market fragility by the time of Lehman's crisis.

Timothy Geithner was instrumental in government dealings with the American International Group insurance company.

Timothy Geithner rejected the request for government funds and pressed AIG to find a private-sector solution to the company's liquidity crisis.

Timothy Geithner believed, along with Paulson, that the Treasury needed new authority to respond to the financial crisis.

On November 24,2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Timothy Geithner to be Treasury Secretary.

Timothy Geithner received the reimbursements and paid the amounts received to the government, but had not paid the remaining half which would normally have been withheld from his pay.

Timothy Geithner testified that he used the software TurboTax to prepare his 2001 and 2002 returns, but that the tax errors were his own responsibility.

Timothy Geithner was sworn in as Treasury Secretary by Vice President Joe Biden and witnessed by President Barack Obama.

Timothy Geithner had authority over the second tranche of $350 billion from the $700 billion banking bailout bill passed by Congress in October 2008.

Timothy Geithner proposed expanding a lending program that would spend as much as $1 trillion to cover the decline in the issuance of securities backed by consumer loans.

Timothy Geithner further proposed to give banks new infusions of capital with which to lend.

On March 11,2009, Timothy Geithner called Ed Liddy, the AIG chief, to protest the bonus payouts and request that the contracting containing the bonuses be renegotiated.

At Timothy Geithner's urging, Liddy cut $9.6 million in payments to company's top 50 executives in half and tied the remainder to performance.

Timothy Geithner defended the bailout of AIG and the payments to the banks, while reiterating previous denials of any involvement in efforts to withhold details of the transactions.

Timothy Geithner's testimony was met with skepticism and angry disagreement by House members of both parties.

Shortly after assuming his role as Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner met in Washington with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

On June 1,2009, during a question-and-answer session following a speech at Peking University, Timothy Geithner was asked by a student whether Chinese investments in US Treasury debt were safe.

In September 2011, Timothy Geithner told a forum that China had "made possible systematic stealing of intellectual property of American companies and have not been very aggressive to put in place the basic protections for property rights that every serious economy needs over time", a rebuke of longstanding policy on the part of China to demand patents and other intellectual property from companies that sought to produce their products in China.

Timothy Geithner furthered that China was acting "very, very aggressive in a strategy they started several decades ago", which he defined as the ultimatum of transferring technology or being unable to produce products in China.

Timothy Geithner was Obama's lead negotiator about the fiscal cliff and the increase in the 2013 debt limit.

For example, on December 5,2012, Timothy Geithner confirmed leaks from the White House, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNBC that the Obama Administration is "absolutely" willing to go over the fiscal cliff if Republicans refused to back off from their opposition to raising rates on wealthier Americans.

Timothy Geithner weathered criticism early in the Obama presidency, when Congressman Connie Mack suggested he should resign over the AIG bonus scandal, and Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said that Timothy Geithner was "out of the loop".

Timothy Geithner left the Obama administration on January 25,2013, and joined the Council on Foreign Relations as a Distinguished Fellow.

In July 2018, The Washington Post revealed that Mariner Finance, a company owned by the private equity firm of which Timothy Geithner is President, engaged in predatory lending behavior; capturing the sentiments of many former employees of Mariner Finance interviewed by The Post, a former manager trainee at a Mariner Finance branch in Nashville characterized the company's business model as "a way of monetizing poor people".

Timothy Geithner was portrayed by Billy Crudup in the HBO film Too Big to Fail, and by Alex Jennings in the BBC TV movie The Last Days of Lehman Brothers.