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Obama, Hu toast 'strategic mutual trust' at state dinnerBy Christina Wilkie - 01/19/11 10:30 PM ET President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao toasted U.S. and Chinese collaboration and mutual interests on Wednesday night at a festive state dinner for 225 guests at the White House. Their toasts marked the high point of an evening notable for its strict adherence to the protocol and symbolism valued in Chinese culture, but which, at the same time, managed to fulfill the Chinese delegation's request for a thoroughly American dinner party. Guests dined on a meal of pear salad, lobster, ribeye steak and...

No good deed goes unpunished; this must be what US Ambassador to China Gary Locke must have been thinking as a firestorm of criticism erupted over his embassy’s handling of the Chen Guangcheng case. Under great pressure, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner arriving for high profile talks with China’s leadership, the embassy and colleagues in the State Department including Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Kurt Campbell had negotiated a delicate deal with Chinese counterparts that Chen accepted. Negotiated with the involvement of top legal scholar Jerome Cohen, and based on a...

Timothy Geithner, a key player in the U.S. government’s 2008 bailout of American International Group Inc., is due back in court Wednesday in a trial of a lawsuit filed by the insurance giant’s former CEO over the handling of the rescue. On Tuesday, Geithner affirmed his belief that the bailout was needed to avert disaster for the financial system. Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve at the time of the rescue and later Treasury secretary. …

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner praised President Barack Obama on Sunday, saying he was "excellent in crisis." “I had an amazingly good experience with this president in this White House, ...who was willing at that time to put policy ahead of politics in a way that was very important for the country," Geithner said on CBS's "Face the Nation." “He was excellent in crisis. Good at making decisions. Very tough on the rest of us, very tough on all of us to examine all the options. And I never felt I was in a position where they put a political...

The White House official whom Bob Woodward charged had crosssed a line by saying he would "regret" printing his version of a set of Washington negotiations was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, a source familiar with the exchange told BuzzFeed Wednesday. The email from Sperling to Woodward, which Woodward read to Politico Wednesday, has transfixed Washington, with Republicans and some in the press charging that it embodies a White House lording it over a cowed press corps. Woodward, Politico reported, called the top official — identified to BuzzFeed as Sperling — to tell him that...

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From the Fed Transcripts: MR. LACKER. If I could just follow up on that, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Yes, go ahead. MR. LACKER. Vice Chairman Geithner, did you say that they are unaware of what we’re considering or what we might be doing with the discount rate? VICE CHAIRMAN GEITHNER. Yes. MR. LACKER. Vice Chairman Geithner, I spoke with Ken Lewis, President and CEO of Bank of America, this afternoon, and he said that he appreciated what Tim Geithner was arranging by way of changes in the discount facility. So my information is different from that. Oh I see. Reuters...

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun, and others will join tea party group TheTeaParty.Net to denounce the House GOP leadership’s caving on taxes later this week. House GOP leadership recently proposed $800 billion in new revenue streams in response to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's proposal on behalf of President Barack Obama. GOP leaders say the new revenue would come from closing tax code deduction loopholes, but more conservative members worry this is a euphemism for tax increases. The event, to take place Wednesday at 3 p.m. at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C., will focus...

There's a new bit of creative thinking making the rounds in DC this weekend, proving yet again that not all ideas wind up being good ones. According to this line of thought, assuming no deal is reached to prevent tax rates from going up on the middle class, Timothy Geithner has certain, hidden superpowers which will save the day. If the tax rates go up, people won't need to worry about it because we just won’t withhold the extra money from their paychecks. The White House has the power to temporarily protect taxpayers from middle-class tax hikes even as upper...

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's opening bid to Speaker John Boehner, a demand for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, was not meant as a serious offer. It was an ultimatum couched in an insult. Translation: "We won the election. We have the whip hand. Not only are you going to sign on to higher tax rates and higher tax revenues, we are going to rub your Tea Party noses in your coming capitulation." That Boehner did not throw the offer back in Geithner's face and tell him, "Give me a call, Tim, when you're serious," suggests that the speaker feels he...

The incomparable Walter Russell Mead, writing in the American Interest, offered a glimpse into the coming dystopia: "Things are getting worse in San Bernardino. The city filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, but its financial situation has continued to deteriorate. And now with what promises to be a heated court battle over payments to the state pension fund in the offing, further cuts are likely. "Things are getting so bad that at a recent city council meeting, the city attorney advised residents to 'lock their doors and load their guns' because the city could no longer afford to keep up...

The Obama Administration proposal to fix the "fiscal cliff" coming at the end of the year called for $1.6 trillion in tax hikes over current policy. House Speaker John Boehner said he was "flabbergasted" when presented with the proposal this week. Boehner tells "Fox News Sunday" that after Geithner briefed him privately on Thursday, he looked at Geithner and said, "You can't be serious." Boehner called it "silliness" that the White House was, among other things, asking Congress to give up its power to set the nation's debt limit. Earlier today, Geithner insisted that the Obama Administration wouldn't relent on...

Negotiations can’t be going too well if the Senate Minority leader is openly scoffing at President Obama’s “bipartisan” plan to solve the looming “fiscal cliff” crisis. Yikes: Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, says he “burst into laughter” Thursday when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner outlined the administration proposal for averting the fiscal cliff. He wasn’t trying to embarrass Geithner, McConnell says, only responding candidly to his one-sided plan, explicit on tax increases, vague on spending cuts. Geithner’s visit to his office left McConnell discouraged about reaching a “balanced” deal on tax hikes and spending reductions designed to prevent a shock...

Matthew Boyle of the Daily Caller reports that internal emails show Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was “the driving force” behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 non-union retirees from the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company, as part of the government’s bailout plan for General Motors.  Union workers, on the other hand, “saw their pensions topped off and made whole.” This decision was supposed to be made by the independent Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which is meant to be free of political influence, so it can represent the interests of private-sector pensioners.Instead, the Daily Caller unearthed a string of emails that show...

The latest development in the Libor-manipulation scandal is that the banks weren’t really fixing the price of the key interest rate in total secret — US regulators were aware of the sleazy activities at the time, and seemed to have done nothing. Which should surprise no one. I can’t tell you how much federal officials knew about the activities of Barclay’s, JPMorgan, Citigroup and the other big banks at the center of the maelstrom. In coming weeks, both Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will inevitably discuss the mess when they appear before Congress. Bernanke testifies...

Financial Times writer Samuel Brittan says You Don’t Need to be a Lefty to Support Krugman. Brittan kicks off with "The remedy for too little spending is more spending. Everything else is commentary." Who Decides? Just who gets to decide there is "too little spending?" Krugman? Brittan? How about the free market? Look at what promotion of spending got us. The mother of all housing bubbles is what. In a 2002 New York Times editorial Krugman said "To fight this recession the Fed needs…soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble...

Jun 7, 2012 4:46pm Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke Warns Congress on ‘Taxmaggedon’: ‘If You All Go on Vacation, It’s Still Going to Happen’ The Federal Reserve Board Chairman had a stern warning today for Congress: “Taxmaggedon” is real, it’s coming and only lawmakers can save the nation from falling off this rapidly approaching “fiscal cliff.” “What is particularly striking here is that this is all pre-programmed,” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said. “If you all go on vacation, it’s still going to happen, so it’s important to be thinking about that and working with your colleagues to see how you might...

WASHINGTON — Fears about a looming fiscal crisis at the end of the year are starting to pinch job growth and threatening to undercut the nation's fragile recovery, a growing number of economists and employers say. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, in testimony Thursday before Congress, repeatedly warned about the so-called fiscal cliff — a reference to the expiration of tax cuts Dec. 31 and the imposition of automatic spending reductions Jan. 1. By some accounts, the U.S. economy could see an unprecedented fiscal hit of as much as $720 billion if the slated changes take effect. They would...

(CNSNews.com) - Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, the Federal Reserve’s holdings of U.S. government debt have quintupled, according to the Fed’s official monthly balance sheet. On Jan. 28, 2009, a week after Obama’s nomination, the Fed owned $302 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. On April 25, 2012, the latest date reported, the Fed owned five and a half time that much in U.S. Treasury securities--$1.668 trillion. That is an increase from January 2009 of $1.366 trillion—or 452 percent. Under Obama, the Federal Reserve has become the single largest owner of U.S. government debt. When Obama entered...

Emigrant Bank was recently identified to receive a waiver that would allow the bank to opt out of rigorous Dodd-Frank requirements. These of course are the same new rules and regulations that Barack deems essential to the nation. Yet when the bank’s owner, Howard Milstein, who is a close friend and was a bundler for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, protested that the new rules would seriously crimp operations of his bank, the Obama Administration worked with members of congress to grant him a waiver from the new rules. Other financial institutions and banks have consistently and vehemently argued that...