in response, a tim geithner spokesperson said, quoting, the allegation that secretary tim geithner tooklse. the department of justice says the investigation into s&p began long before the u.s. credit rating was downgraded. s&p is now asking the courts to force the obama administration to turn over all documents and recordings associated with the obam obama/tim geithner meeting as well as the tim geithner phone call. it is not clear when the judge would make a decision on those documents. >> all right, trace, thank you. >>> cannot miss video coming out of a student government meeting at one of the largest universities in america. students at ucla held a hearing to protest their school's relationship with companies who do business with israel. and when the conservative activist ben shapiro found out about the conservative activism voices were there, he dropped out to make sure the other side was presented, as well. >> i got out of that and left my 1 month-old baby here when i saw what was going on. i have never been more ashamed to be an alumnis of this university. pretend this is about p

>> tim geithner's a very interesting character here. he spends a lot of time in these meetings sparring and jousting with the fed's policy hawks. officials from regional federal reserve banks who are more worried about inflation than with the financial system stability. and geithner spends a lot of time jousting with them. frankly, you know, there's some moments here where he looks like he's behind the curve. there's a january 2008 meeting where geithner gives his assessment of the financial system, and he says it looks like the process of healing has already started. he couldn't have been more wrong in that case. >> let's talk also about janet yellen, fed chairman now. what was her behavior then, what can we glean from that? >> one of the things that got yellen this job was a sense she had very good judgment, that in 2007 when we looked at earlier transcripts she was one of the first people to say, hey, we have real problems in this housing market. we know from their decision since 2008 she's pushed very hard to keep interest rates low

i spoke to tim geithner for this piece and what he said is that jeff is the sort of person who does nottalk about stuff, he gets it done. put restaurantys for his resume as well. a number of investments and some nice restaurants here. the emmanuel, a former colleague, used to say that he invested in nice places. fiola, oneantf, a restaurant of the year award. -- as a diverse sportfolio diverse portfolio. he has put a lot of money into a foundation that does a lot of charity work. >> one of the things that you will have to be able to do is hit the ground running. he will have to repair relations with business. what is the word? is he up to the task? >> i spoke to a large executives for this piece. i spoke to david rubenstein who you heart jeff zients-- people say he is great, but. has never heard anyone say a bad thing about jeff. mark zuckerberg said he was thrilled to hear of the appointment. -- what theys they think that he will be able to do is use the convening power of the nec office to bring business leaders into the room and make them stakeholders in the president cost agenda pri

it.lk about -- we fixed so in 2009 secretary tim geithner proposed the stress tests. we aggressively over four months raised $80 billion for these new banks. -- these banks. today, they are on their third stress test and this is being run by the ecb. we are so much further along. our banks are looking to put money to work. in europe, the banks are still deleveraging as we speak. in the united states, we need more loans. with respect to monetary policy, is anything remaining to be done or is that not going to be a factor as you see tapering? len spokeoman yel today that she will carry on the policy that chairman ben reinforces concept of low interest rates for a long period of time. and she reaffirmed the need to reduce the bond purchases and continue with the tapering. the one thing that people forget when we talk about the tapering, everybody gets concerned about what does this mean? we went from u.s. federal deficits of $1 trillion or more to deficits that will be around $600 billion this year. so the treasury borrowing for the last few years have fallen considerabl

former treasury secretary tim geithner is making news. steve liesman has the details.. yeah, we have the name and the cover actually of tim geithner's fourth coming book called "stress test." it is official. it is a bit of a handbook on financial crises, a bit of a memoir, and a bit of an explanation for what he did and why he did it during the financial crisis. he released a statement, by the way, this book is scheduled to come out in may 2014, may 13th. geithner released a statement along with the announcement of the book and i want to tell you what he said. quote, we made mistakes. it was messy, and the damage was devastating and long lasting. and yet, at the moments of the most extreme peril, the united states was able to design and execute a remarkably effective strategy. that, of course, is his view on the crisis response. another thing he said, quote, we saved the economy from a failing financial system, though we lost the country doing it. geithner talking about effectively the political fallout from the crisis. one other comment that i think is poignant here f

make sense. >> tim geithner in march was admonishing the board members to be very careful about the statements they were making. he didn't want to instill a panic. you never want to see a panic. on the other hand, he didn't seem to have an appreciation for the gravity. it seemed at that point somebody needed to throw up a red flag and say we have a real problem. >> jim cramer was jumping up and down about it in august of 2007 and they were laughing at him at that point. >> you don't want to be seen as a chicken little and overshoot something. >> but let's fast forward this into 2014. we haveplaced so much faith in these guys to do the right thing and to financially engineer our way through a $4.1 trillion balance sheet. and these transcripts tell you that they are fallible, very fallible. >> don't underestimate the impact of the liquidity moves that they made at that meeting because they were very significant and with the swap lines and with the other points that they made providing liquidity into the system was what kept the economy from absolutely coming and grinding to a halt at

we had paulson's deposition, former treasury secretary, hank paulson, we had tim geithner, he was atime of the bailout the new york fed president, big player in this. and now, finally, we've gotten -- we haven't gotten it totally yet, it's still going -@on. we've got ben bernanke's testimony, i wish -- liz: he's poised as a lawyer, he memorized the questions. >> i can't tell you what he said because it's not over yet. liz: right. >> i just tried to get some atmosphere orics about what it's -- atmospherics about what it's like in that room. david boies is one of the best lawyers in the world -- liz: he's a genius. >> he is what he is, he's dyslexic too. liz: i've read the book by malcolm gladwell, he's dyslexic. >> from what i understand, this is a six-hour deposition. it starts at nine, they're going to take a break -- there's me and david, and you were involved trying to break us up there. [laughter] liz: i love that. >> he memorizes every question. i can't even tell you what he's going to say, it's all here. liz: again, as you say, he's dyslexic, but it gives him an advantage becau

tim geithner left as treasury secretary. steven chu left as energy secretary.arquee names left but not attorney general eric holder. he stayed. sort of quiet assurances at the time that he did not intend to stay for the whole second term, but he did want to stay at least a little while longer so he is till there now. five years into it and counting. nobody's quite sure exactly how much longer attorney general eric holder is planning to stay in office. while he's still around, though, turns out he's making it crystal clear he's going to make the most of the time he has left. the attorney general sort of quietly without much attention has been on a real tear recently. i mean, oat a remarkable pace, he's made big policy announcements and changes and dramatic statements about public policy and fights he wants the justice department to engage in from his perch atop that department. this latest example was this week. speech at georgetown university. he put a spotlight on the fact there are 5.8 million people in this country who aren't allowed to vote knthough they ar

tim geithner says that jeff zients is somebody who does not just talk about stuff, he gets stuff done julianna, any failures on his resume? >> you really have to dig kind of deep, betty. as i mentioned, he did bring major league baseball to washington, d.c. he helped convince the major league baseball that even though off i-95, there was enough room to have the nationals, or what would become the nationals, the montrÉal expos, here in the nation's capital. his investor group made a bid to own the team but lost to that bit but it went to a single family instead of an investor group. i talked to steve case for this story, also, and he said it is probably better that way. he is serving this country and is in this post as nec director instead of owning a major league baseball team. >> what is the role of the nec director? >> the role is somebody who can take disparate views and bring them together and flesh out ideas and present them to the president. really to run a process. if you have an economic crisis, he is somebody who would help automate the administration'-- coordinate the admini

he served as tim geithner's chief of staff in treasury and is also partner at perkins.tions. how should we interpret these. >> i think what jack was trying to convey to the public and especially to congress, at this time of year, the debt limit gain is different. that's because we're in the middle of tax refund season. money is going out from the treasury in a big way, billions and billions every day in tax refunds. >> right. >> the treasury has much more ability to predict and control how long those extraordinary measures can last. >> what is the likelihood that congress has to act? >> look, it's always hard to tell because that depends on human behavior and politics obviously. what worries me is every time you take it to the brink on one of these occasions, they may screw it up. congress has the capability to not get things done on the schedule they intend. right now there's no plain in the house of representatives i can see to get the debt limit increased. the big news is, the republican leadership is trying to convey to members that they shouldn't take it to the bri

and one of them just left office, ben bernanke, one of them left office a little while ago, tim geithner was at the table there. take a look at the highlights there were several unscheduled meetings we'll be looking for. this was early january when the economy was almost a year later declared to have been in recession. the federal reserve began cutting rates relatively aggressively. what were they thinking back then? they cut it to 3%. they eventually would go to zero by the end of the year. back in june of that year, they held at 2%. that's a meeting we'll be looking for. obviously there are meetings that are bracketed by bear stearns in march when jpmorgan bought bear stearns. there was a meeting in the middle of that whole kerfuffle there. we'll get probably a pretty important piece of it in the next several days we think when we hear about it. >> when we get the minutes released, that's just the highlights of it. this is the actual transcript of everything that was said around the table? >> exactly. it's discussion that has names attached to the discussion, which is why there's a big

$5 billion fraud suit against you for the financial crisis seems to be that it is revenge from tim geithner you downgraded the united states in 2011. have things changed? are the processes changing because you are, after all, a business? >> well, that's an interesting question. and, you know, what i would like to say is as far as puerto rico goes, we're looking at the fundamentals as they are presented relative to our criteria and that is what is guiding our rating actions in this case on puerto rico and the current watch that we have in place. >> let me ask you one more question about sort of to david's point and the fundamentals on the ground in puerto rico, what's actually happening there. their response seems to be that they're confident they say that they have liquidity on hand to deal with their current situation. is that a true statement? do you believe in it? should we believe in that? >> well, one reason we have the rating on credit watch is because we will continue to monitor their liquidity at this point. the government of the commonwealth has stated that they have sufficient liq

transcripts with the individual statements by the members, bernanke was there, janet yellen was there, tim geithnernd, of course, the hawks were all there as well as the doves and we're going to be reading these transcripts throughout the morning and bringing you some of the nuggets from arguably one of the most historical financial years in u.s. history, carl. >> obviously it's on the fed website, steve, and september 16th, 2008, good morning, everybody, sorry for the late beginning. you don't need to dig very far for some nuggets to give you a sense of what we all remember was the mood back then. >> no, i think that's right. and just how worried the federal reserve was. remember they brought the interest rates down at the beginning of the year of january when there was some concern about recession by 1.5 basis points including two emergency metings that month alone. but it was down 3%. and remember they paused again in june, so there were times when the fed felt a little more sure about the outlook and a little less sure obviously when september rolled around and just how concerned they were will