East Village Afternoon

Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, is being grilled in front of Congress right now. As well he should be. We wrote the other day about the false furor over the AIG employee bonus pay-outs. As it turns out, Geithner himself pressured Congress, namely Sen. Chris Dodd, into allowing the bonus payments to be made. Supposedly Geithner claims that if the payments weren't made, the AIG employees could have successfully sued for twice the amount of the bonuses. He also claims to have set into action several processes which woul have forced those AIG bonuses to be repaid. Who knows who's telling the truth? We don't know. Geithner doesn't help his credibility when he claims to have only learned about the bonuses on March 10, 2009 when many reputable reporters are stating that it was public knowledge many months ago that the bonuses were going to be handed out, and that it seems highly implausible that Geithner wouldn't have known about those bonuses until March 10. All we know for sure is that Sen. Wyden and Sen. Snowe must surely feel vindicated by now. If only the rest of Congress had listened to them instead of Tim Geithner.