Jun 09 2008
Reversing the Greenspan Course
Just read the news on WSJ: “Federal Reserve Bank of New York Pushes For Tougher Rules on Credit Derivatives”
It looks like a quiet movement is undergoing to reverse the course Greenspan set for the Fed.
WSJ appears to be a more critical voice than the Economist in evaluating the Greenspan legacy. Not long ago, it published several pieces (e.g. “His Legacy Tarnished, Greenspan Goes on Defensive“) highlighting the downside of the Greenspan legacy: too lenient on opportunistic investors and too loose on market regulation.
Therefore, it is little wonder WSJ put Timothy Geithner’s recent speech at the top of its web page today. This is yet another evidence that Greenspan’s successors are seeing the danger in his policies and are trying to reverse the course. People may ridicule Bernanke for his seemingly wobbling response to the credit crunch earlier, particularly when he led the three quarter cut (?) after a sharp market drop. Some even wondered whether he was duped into a rookie mistake. However, the continued market slide and the weakness in the economy vindicated his foresight. Now he’s done with the cuts but still pumping heavily into repo market–seems to be another sign of determined monetary discipline.
Geithner’s efforts are equally remarkable. Those who say that financial market should remain the ultimate free market are either fools or pirates (or both). Those reckless loan or swap underwriters are no different from the lawless polluters or highway litterers. It is just as ridiculous to suggest that ordinary investors (or even conventional credit agencies) are equally responsible for the credit mess as calling regular consumers environmental polluters or labor abusers because they bought goods manufactured by wrong doers.
However, what strikes me the most is the mediocre background of the second most important central banker in the U.S., Timthoy Geithner. Something tells me this guy is a man to watch. His academic training and personal achievement don’t appear to warrant the position he is in (the President of NY Fed), and I wasn’t able to figure out his family connections either. Geithner could be a Jewish name but nothing in his personal connections suggest an outright Jewish background: his sibilings all have biblical names (David, Sarah) but David married a Catholic, it seems. He himself went to Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins. His mentors include Summers and Rubin. But if one is to survive to be the Prince of Banking, it is hard to imagine he could do without a Jewish mentor. His father, Peter, now sits on a Harvard philanthropy fund board and others (including Harvard-Yenching and earlier, the Ford Foundation) but the trail goes cold beyond that.
So who is this guy? Only 46 years old with no economics or finance training or background but presides the New York Federal Reserve. A political appointee but is well connected to Wall Street. According to a recent posting on Muckety, “If there were ever a career civil servant’s Hall of Fame, Timothy F. Geithner would no doubt be an inductee”. I certainly second that sentiment.
Anyway, two more things found about him:
An old speech on the need to regulate financial market.
A profile written by a financial reporter.