Friday, August 21, 2009

Geithner: bailouts not designed to help Goldman

Those of you following Finance Trends on Twitter may have seen my earlier tweet about the upcoming "Digg Dialogue" interview with Tim Geithner, hosted by WSJ online editor Alan Murray.

That interview will include questions submitted to Geithner from Digg users - and many of them, from those concerning a proposed audit of the Federal Reserve to questions about Geithner's past tax "issues", are appropriately on target and often hilarious.

So while I had a great time reading through some of these user comments (hat tip: Howard Lindzon), I had to wonder how many of the top questions would actually make the cut.

Now, Alan Murray informs us that he has indeed posed these Digg questions to Tim Geithner, and that the full interview will be up on Digg and WSJ.com on Tuesday.



In the meantime, here's a brief clip from that interview. In this segment, Geithner states that the US bailouts and rescue efforts of financial firms were not designed to help Goldman Sachs or any particular firm.

Oh, and here's one more excerpt from the accompanying WSJ blog post:

"
Mr. Geithner said while he understands the public anger towards the bailouts, policymakers acted honorably in their efforts to save the financial system. He said the government needs policymakers who understand financial markets and are able to help craft efforts that protect taxpayers."

So I'll leave you with one question: have you seen evidence that our recent policymakers understand financial markets and are crafting "efforts that protect taxpayers"?

Update: full WSJ interview w/ Geithner now available online.