if you remember, geithner didn't office this. that came from hank paulson.t started before obama was even in office. so it was very overtly political. keep in mind all of us may hate the idea of the bailout but geithner pointed out that it likely saved the financial markets and the economy from other collapse. geithner says treasury is working to close out that program as soon as possible. robin? >>> jen, thank you. people who plead no contest or guilty to minor offenses are going to be asked to provide $25 in groceries instead of a $25 fine for court costs. >> i think a little bit of charity, they learn there are other needy people out there. sometimes we have people in court that i'm telling them to do this. you can go to the food bank and get some food because it sounds like you probably need it. >> it makes more of a point than just paying $25 that goes to waste. >> the court has been doing this for the past 11 years. they say it has been a big success. >>> soon, you could skip the customs line when you fly home from overseas. homeland security wants to

the final thing, and i think we're starting to see this with barney frank and the geithner proposals is this idea of a resolution of 40, which is the idea of being able to wind down an investment bank hedge fund, insurance company, the lehman, aig and franklin long-term capitalists of the world in an orderly way. the bankruptcy code today is not a very good system for winding the company's down and what you think about happened to lehman brothers it was more the code than anything else because it is within the preceding this cabalism. money got locked up. actually not in the united states but london, in the u.k., and there wasn't just investors that had the money locked up, investors around the world, and part of the spiral downward that week was a result more than anything else of the fact that this money was locked up and all of these investors started having to settle down all of their other assets and it turned into this vicious cycle and this fire sale, and so that becomes very, very important. so to the extent that we can actually have a resolution of 40 which would be similar

of course, that came before geithner was even in office.was engineered by president bush's treasury secretary hank paulson and it was pretty overtly political. also you had one party kind of blaming geithner. it happened before he even got there. i think everybody basically hates the idea of a bailout. even geithner said he doesn't like it either, but he also points out that any measure of confidence that you look at about the markets is much better than it was a year ago. you know, at that time it looked like the economy could basically freeze up. anyway, he says the treasury is working to close the program as soon as we can. >> jennifer, thanks. >>> the house is trying to make sure doctors don't lose money on medicare. it voted last night to stop a 21% cut on reimbursements next year. republicans called the bill a budget buster. they say it's payback for getting doctor support for health care reform. the bill still has to be approved by the senate. >>> a denver-area speeding ticket could mean a trip to the grocery store. between thanksgiv

they were giving it to geithner in the meeting yesterday.e of them said they wanted him to quit. >> public has lost all confidence in your ability to do the job, reflecting on your president. >> congressman, can you -- >> liberal democrats agree that it really is time for a fresh start. >> if you look at any measure of consumer and investor confidence today, if you look at any measure of the strength and stability and health of the american economy, if you look at any measure of confidence in the financial system, it is substantially stronger today than when the president of the united states took office. congressman -- >> tell all of that to the millions of americans who no longer have jobs. >> now, that's geithner's side, right, that confidence is back and that the financial markets and the economy didn't collapse. it's also kind of wall street's side, too, the treasury's side, even the white house's side, but not necessarily the feeling of that other lawmaker and millions of americans. again, geithner is saying that they hope to close out

that's what treasury secretary geithner says obama administration is focusing on.press" geithner isn't say whether achieving either of those goals meets higher taxes. >> are you going to raise taxes? >> we're going to have to bring our resources and our expenditures more into balance. >> it's possible? >> well, again, the president's committed to make sure we get this economy back on track. we're bringing -- >> you talked about hard choices. why can't you give a straight answer to whether taxes have to come up with a deficit this big? >> we're focused on getting growth back on track. we have to decide what it is going to take. i want to say this clearly. he was committed in the campaign -- he said in the campaign and is committed to make sure we do this in a way that's not going to add to the burden of people making less than $250,000. it's going to be hard to do that. we can do that. >> while the economy has been recovering, the recovery has been shaky and uneven. >>> chrysler is trying to trim its workforce even more. it's offering buyouts to 23,000 employees. th

bancorp, for example, can lewis of bank of america saved merrill lynch, tim geithner and hank paulson essentially put kenneth lewis in a headlock and ordered him to bail out a merrill lynch. if you're going to put people in headlock you can put the ceo and u.s. bancorp in a headlock and say bailout lehman brothers and the reason that is important is you had after lehman failed close to $700 billion worth of commercial real estate, residential real estate, stocks, bond, everything. lehman had tons of assets and what goes into bankruptcy you have a bankruptcy reorganize their and they are interested in selling assets and unwinding risks and this was the most horrifying and wind in the history of all bankruptcy's. there was no preparation the documents to the lehman document was only 15 pages long, this is almost a $700 billion bankruptcy and the initial document presented to judge packin the bankruptcy court was only 15 pages long. this document should have been 300 pages long to articulate how they're going to unwind this risk so what happened was after lehman failed and you had this o

geithner here is exactly on target.in our previous hearings, which i appreciate, no one went after the previous administration, specifically secretary paulson harder than ranking member isa and myself. we want to question the same folks who are now in our current administration who were involved in this decision. the chairman mentioned shotgun being held to -- the only shotgun involved here was what the government held to bank of america's head when they forced them to take -- nine days after this passed, they forced bank of america, when bank of america had to sit down with eight other big institutions in country, force them to take tarp money. then in the deal itself, that's why we need officials who were involved in this whole decision here as i suggested in some of our previous hearings. i think mr. paulson actually misled the congress when he came in front of the congress last year demanding that, asking for the tarp money. as i said, nine days later changing course dramatically and saying we're not going to purcha

tim geithner is saying, look, of course -- of course we care about the deficit. a record 1.4 trillion dollar deficit is too high. but he's saying we're noth start fighting it right away. the priority is to rescue the economy first. this is on nbc's ""meet the press"," the obama administration is focusing on growth and job creation. that's one economic theory, that when nobody is spending, when businesses aren't spending, when fami families aren't spending, the government has to spend to keep the economy from collapsing. again it's just one philosophy of this. tim geithner says he supports the efforts in congress to extend unemployment benefits and the home buyer tax credit and i hope if you're watching you know we've been following this so closely. maybe we'll have news on that this week coming out of washington. chrysler is shrinking again, buying out another 23,000 workers. this week, chrysler is going to lay out a five-year plan to try to get back into profitability, to become a successful company. it's out of bankruptcy, but still in a lot of trouble. so, tho

i look forward to secretary geithner's testimony. >> i appreciate your comments as well secretary geithner, if you would summarize and we'll put any full text in the record that you have and we look forward to your comments and other good dialogue. >> thank you mr. chairman, mr. lugar, and the committee. it's a pleasure to be here today. this committee has played an indispensable role to strengthen america's leadership in the national financial system. this is one of those moments. as you understand and as he said in your statement, economic policy is central to achieving our national security and foreign policy objectives, our capacity to advance and protect our national security interest depends fundamentally on our economic strength at home. but our economic strength is increasingly dependent on the strength, openness, and stability of the global economy. six years ago the u.s. played a central role in the creation of the international financial institutions of the multilateral trading system. today that system has to be reformed to address the great challenges of our time. and we are n

in the first meeting highest it by timothy geithner a-- in the first meeting hosted by timothy geithner. that dialogue will continue to be at peace of our engagement strategy. the clean energy agreements just signed by the president point towards a future of greater cooperation. hopefully they will help to put china on a path to lower carbon emissions and will create greater opportunities for producers to be selling into the chinese markets. the u.s. trade representative and commerce department are working through the wto mechanism to get china to put additional commitments to open its markets. all of those things will have to be part of the solution. i look forward to being part of that effort. >> i think this is important. if we think about part of this strong dollar is rebalancing. look at states like washington who are basically trade-neutral. if the whole country would be doing that, particularly with the opportunity of a $6 trillion market globally, it has great -- we have to get people to lower tariffs. the community ought to get together on that. we have 35% tariffs on clean ene

. >> host: tim geithner? >> guest: if we talk but where he was in terms of the bailout he was head of the new york fed which had a tye relationship with wall street. historical eight has the tightest relationship and a revolving four-door between the new york fed and leaders from wall street for example, right now jaime dimas has a senior position and runs a large bank, jpmorgan chase and succeeded sandy weill. there is a constant revolving door procure president of the new york fed, you have perhaps a closer relationship to wall street and perhaps the chairmen of the fed even ben bernanke. >> host: let me mention something. last year, i had ben bernanke coming before the budget committee. this was during the whole bail-out process. as you know, what the very least over $2 trillion with the zero interest loans to financial institutions. you put the americans money at risk can you tell them? who got the money? he said i am not going to tell you. $2 trillion? by the time the day was over reintroduced legislatio

. >>> treasure secretary timothy geithner siz says that the economic recovery could be choppy. in an interview that airs today, he says it will take a while for the economy to come back. he says this crisis hurt the economy a lot so it's taking time to fix that they're encouraging signs in the economy right now, but he refused to say whether the recession is over. he said the real test of recovery is bringing back jobs and investors' confidence. >>> president obama celebrated halloween the same way that many of you might have, greeting trick-or-treaters. some 2000 kids came to the white house with their parents and mr. obama doled out presidential m & ms, dried fruit and butter cookies made by the white house chef. michelle obama wore cat ears and a top with leopard color. later, they held a reception for military families in the white house. >>> two men allegedly involved with a radical islamist group have an extradition hearing in canada tomorrow. they were arrested in windsor, ontario, yesterday morning. a two-year investigation by the fbi alleges they conspired to commit fe

larry sanders and timothy geithner. -- who failed to get that. larry summers and timothy geithner. i have been the wall street journal's fevered bidding process. turnaround is fair -- a favorite whipping post. the turnaround is fair play. balt -- paul volcker has reached the same conclusion and he finally -- even though he was in the tent, more recently he has been saying this is wrong. alan greenspan, who, you read his autobiography and is one great acclamation for ann rand and he has come out and said that too big to fail is dangerous. the governor of the bank of england has said that around the world everyone has forged this consensus that too big to fail is the single biggest great -- the single biggest threat to our banking system. we have socialized risk and privatized gain. you cannot do that. if you do that, you'll get distorted investment patterns and this willingness to tolerate the risk that we got and that enhances the destruction that we got. all of this is deeply problematic. we have also participated in what i call the regulatory sure raid. what is this? it is fun, a

treasury secretary timothy geithner says the economic recovery could be choppy. in an interview today he said it will take a while for the economy to come back saying the crisis hurt the economy and it's take rn time to fix it. there are encouraging signs in the economy but he refused to say whether the vegas over. he said the real test of recovery is bringing back jobs and investor confidence. president obama celebrated halloween the same way many of you might have, greeting trick-or-treaters. 2,000 kids came to the white house with parents and president obama doled out dried fruit m & ms and butter cookies. michelle obama wore cat ears and a leopard patterned shirt. they later had a reception for military families in the white house. >>> two men arrested in windsor ontario yesterday morning. a two-year investigation by the fbi alleges they conspired to commit federal crimes. their arrest came days after a shootout with the fbi in detroit. the son of imam killed in the shooting was also arrested in windsor. >>> the number of kids dying from swine flu jumped this

. >>> treasury secretary timothy geithner says that the economic recovery could be a little choppy. in an interview that airs today he said it will take a while for the economy to come back. he said this crisis hurt the economy a lot so it's taking time to fix that. there are encouraging signs in the economy right now, but he refused to say whether the recession is over. he says the real test of recovery is bringing back jobs and investors' confidence. >>> police in seattle say one of their officers was shot and killed last night. our seattle affiliate the king reports it was a training officer who was killed. he was in a car with a female rookie officer when a car pulled alongside and opened fire. king says that the rookie was wounded but managed to fire several shots as the car backed away and left the scene. a search is under way for the shooters. this is the first seattle police officer to be killed in the line of duty since 2006. >>> even as hope dims of finding any survivors, rescuers are still searching the waters off southern california for a third straight day today. overni

how would you rate the secretary of the treasury geithner's handling of the program so far? >> i think our criticism of the prior administration, in particular then-secretary paulson was being less than transparent. in saying that the banks were healthy when he had his own private concerns about individual banks -- in coming out and saying that they were healthy was a lack of transparency. it also created unrealistic expectations. it created the expectation that the financial institutions would return to lending. which we see is not happened. and that was our criticism there. and i think in many ways our criticisms about transparency continue. secretary geithner have done some good things and they adopted our recommendations of posting all the contracts and agreements involving the t.a.r.p. up on the web with the stress tests and releasing information was positive. but in other areas they've been deficient and i think in particular in requiring t.a.r.p. recipients to report on their use of funds. and in certain other areas it has been disappointing. >> so what are the other

in the first meeting highest it by timothy geithner a-- in the first meeting hosted by timothy geithner. that dialogue will continue to be at peace of our engagement strategy. the clean energy agreements just signed by the president point towards a future of greater cooperation. hopefully they will help to put china on a path to lower carbon emissions and will create greater opportunities for producers to be selling into the chinese markets. the u.s. trade representative and commerce department are working through the wto mechanism to get china to put additional commitments to open its markets. all of those things will have to be part of the solution. i look forward to being part of that effort. >> i think this is important. if we think about part of this strong dollar is rebalancing. look at states like washington who are basically trade-neutral. if the whole country would be doing that, particularly with the opportunity of a $6 trillion market globally, it has great -- we have to get people to lower tariffs. the community ought to get together on that. we have 35% tariffs on clean ene

even democrats hopped on this train to say that it is time for tim geithner to go. they are frustrated with him because they feel like he is more wall street than main street. that was a criticism of him coming in. on the other side, republicans are saying it is time to dump him because he is not paying attention to anything. they say he is part of the problem when he was with the new york fed. he was so involved in the problem, people do not think he has been part of the cure. host: is he on his way out? guest: i don't think so. people who are calling for a single -- second singles are also calling for his head. whenever popular support has gone away, i would echo that he is not on his way out but he has a lot of room to regain his composure and standing in the fed and congress. host: how does he do that? guest: you tell made. i guess he should not pass any expensive bailout bills. he needs to get back in the game and not make a fool of himself by standing up. i saw the congressional exchange and it seemed a little child that spread guest: i was impressed body push

. >> host: where was tim geithner? >> guest: if we talk about where he was, he was head of the new york fed which had a very tight relationship with wall street. it has had a relationship and a revolving board door. he runs a large bank. so there is this constant revolving door. if you are running or our president you have perhaps the closest relationship that almost the chairman of the fed. >> host: while we are on the fed let me mention something. last year i had ben bernanke before the budget committee. this was during the whole bailout. as you know i want to get into this. at the very least we know that they lend out over $2 trillion in 0 inches loans to financial institutions. so i said, you know, can you tell the american people who get the money to back the putting their money at risk. most of us would like to know. who got the money. he said, this is pretty amazing, i'm not going to tell you. $2 trillion you're not going to tell the american people. by the time that day was over we introduce legislation to make

to one extent last year steven friedan who is the new york fed were tim geithner was president was at the same time on the board of directors said goldman sachs. so basically you have got purefoy don the place where you can get money from an you go to foyt in the door of the place that gets the benefits. >> host: it is an enormous conflict of interest. >> guest: from day one the fed was a conflict of interest. their relationship is the new york fed is the most powerful but from day one that is accomplished. there should not be members of the board on the board it or in any way related to the banks that received any kind of money from the fed. otherwise holidayed think. let it be a private bank but don't let it have access to the ability to create public money. >> host: how do, in your judgment, these guys with so much power plane literally but trillions of dollars, get away without the kind of public scrutiny-- i make a point when you are on the floor of the senate you are fighting for $20 million there could be a six hour debate. meanwhile these guys say no discussion. nobody knows h

how far, treasury secretary geithner can extend it for ten months. that could prove to be very politically unpopular. a lot of critics of t.a.r.p. but at the same time, we've got most people agreeing that at least the program prevented a catastrophic collapse of the financial system. but when you look at the real u.s. economy, we're really still struggling. unemployment is over 10%. the credit crunch is certainly not over. and today, there's a hearing on capitol hill on financial regulatory reform. lawmakers push hard on the fact, why not let t.a.r.p. die? here's how geithner responded to that. >> we are working to put the t.a.r.p. out of its misery and no one will be happier than i am to see that program terminated and unwound. and i want to point out that we are moving very aggressively to close down and terminate the programs that define t.a.r.p. at the beginning of the crisis. >> reporter: there's also a lot of talk, richelle, right now getting attention about how do you use the remaining t.a.r.p. funds? there's about $300 billion left. do you us

. >> timothy geithner on nbc "meet the press."n following the home buyer credit, still happening in washington, robin. not law yet but we'll keep you updated. >> thank you. >>> you-e be ever been on a pla with a screaming child? it's no fun for the parents or the passengers. one airline is trying to make amends after booting a mom and toddler from a flight. we have your views on whether the screaming kid should be allowed on a plane. >>> all right. if you have a flex spending account for medical bills, you could be hit by the health care plan. congressional democrats want to cap those tax-free accounts at 2500 bucks a year. right now most companies cap them at 5,000 bucks. the cap would mean more than $13 billion in tax revenue. insurance companies, some unions and others say it's too hard on the mid-middle class. >>> southwest airlines has apologized for kicking a mom and a toddler off of a flight. the crew booted him because the boy was screaming, go, plane, go! and, i want daddy! it drowned out the preflight safety announcement

tim geithner will be one of the witnesses. >>> rafer, it sounded like you were going to say somethingd. >> his wife is due with his first child any second. >> he's not sleeping and she's not sleeping. >> got my pager on. >> good morning, everyone. the so far the only delay is ground stoppage in atlanta, poor visibility, low clouds. chicago, an hour or more because of the wind. new york city metros, north wind again. short delays out of that. atlanta, again, a morning ground stop until 8:30. san francisco, showers later this afternoon. more in jst a bit. >> thank you. >>> sarah palin is clobbering some pormer mccain staffers. you'll hear the new details that is out today. >>> a little boy who had trouble walking got help from a new buddy. >>> good morning. is the sun just peeking in the room? morning, sunshine. here's what's going on today. >>> i don't think there's an age limit on something as valuable as life. >> to get a ma'mmogram or not? today that is the question. >>> and people in north carolina community are devastated this morning. what led police to the body of a small child

where we sit, in the first months of my administration, because of the steps taken by secretary geithnernd others in our economic team, we were able to stabilize the financial system. we were able to ensure that the economy did not slip back into a depression. we take for granted now, but it is something that all the members of the cabinet who participated are extremely proud of. since that time, we passed a new recovery and that put a middle- class tax cut into people's pockets, invested in infrastructure across the country and put people back to work, and something that is not noted in f which is to help stabilize state budgets at a time when we could have seen hundreds of thousands of layoffs among teachers and police officers and firefighters. our economy is growing for the first time in more than a year. we know that economic growth is a prerequisite for job growth. having said that, we cannot sit back and be satisfied given the extraordinarily high unemployment levels that we have seen. we have only taken the first step in securing our economy and making sure that it is moving on t

also yesterday the attorney general and treasury secretary geithner announced the creation of a financial fraud task force. it's a significant step in our efforts to strengthen fraud prevention and enforcement. it uses the authority we provide in the fraud enforcement and recovery act. i worked hard with senator grassley and senator coffman to draft -- draft this act and get it passed. i was pleased to be there when the president signed it into law. it gives law enforcement new tools and resources to investigate and prosecute the kind of financial frauds that are undermining our country. we're now hard at work in [ inaudible ] as well. just this week we learned the government has paid more than $47 billion in questionable medicare claims. as we prepare to consider health reform legislation, we have to address these issues of health care fraud. i hope that our new act that we worked on in a bipartisan way will help that. we have to complete our legislative work on a media shield bill. the u.s. aid patriot act, sunset extension act. and on these matters, i appreciate the support we have fro

no one is saying this and the new media but this is backed up by ben bernanke, timothy geithner -- they will not say september 11, but they all said that this run of the treasury happened the morning of september 11. our nation was attacked. this is two attacks. one in the first year of the last presidency and one in the last year of the last presidency, both on september 11. the media has not reported what happened. guest: sorry i don't have the specifics what you are referring to. i will say as a general matter, the issue you are raising, the potential for a cyber attack on the nation's financial system is quite real and i think treasury officials and intelligence officials taken very seriously. an interesting anecdote that kind of illustrates that that goes to some of the people you were mentioning in positions of authority at the time. in the may, 2007, meeting, when mike mcconnell got present a bus -- bush to sign off to do his that attack -- cyber attack and iraq, he made a point how dangerous is cyber attacks on our financial system could be, and the analogy was if the 9/11 terro

secretary geithner came. he was talking about what's happening g-20 and g-8. there's nothing happening. it's all this talk about cooperation at g-8 and g-20. there's nothing happening as it relates to really regulating in a harmonized way our financial systems. our responsibility isn't just to get this right for our country right now and to make sure that we don't jeopardize capitalism that we love by putting in place a bill that we know creates huge moral hazards. but we need to show leadership to the world. we don't need to step back and have a central government approach to our banking institution that is other economies are going to adopt. let me just say this in closing. mr. chairman, there has been nobody in the senate that has treated me with greater respect for a junior senator from tennessee or greater kindness or included me in things that i felt to be important. nobody has treated me like you have. no one. i think causing us to have to have amendments in place next week that are actually written out is going to be detrimental maybe we could continue