Stress Test
Reflections on Financial Crises
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
From the former Treasury Secretary, the definitive account of the unprecedented effort to save the U.S. economy from collapse in the wake of the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression
On 26 January, 2009, during the depths of the financial crisis and having just completed five years as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy F. Geithner was sworn in by President Barack Obama as the seventy-fifth Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Now, in a strikingly candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, Geithner takes readers behind the scenes during the darkest moments of the crisis. Swift, decisive, and creative action was required to avert a second Great Depression, but policy makers faced a fog of uncertainty, with no good options and the risk of catastrophic outcomes.
Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises takes us inside the room, explaining in accessible and forthright terms the hard choices and politically unpalatable decisions that Geithner and others in the Obama administration made during the crisis and recovery. He discusses the most controversial moments of his tenures at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and at the Treasury, including the harrowing weekend Lehman Brothers went bankrupt; the searing crucible of the AIG bonuses controversy; the development of his widely criticized but ultimately successful plan in early 2009 to end the crisis; the bracing fight for the most sweeping financial reforms in seventy years; and the lingering aftershocks of the crisis, including high unemployment, the fiscal battles, and Europe’s repeated flirtations with the economic abyss.
Geithner also shares his personal and professional recollections of key players such as President Obama, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and Larry Summers, among others, and examines the tensions between politics and policy that have come to dominate discussions of the U.S. economy. An insider’s account of how the Obama administration saved the economy but lost the American people, Stress Test reveals a side of Timothy Geithner that only few have seen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Geithner, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, confesses early on in his memoir that a lack of natural public speaking gifts presented a challenge in his rise to power in government. In delivering the audio edition, Geithner presses along in a manner that projects competence and a generally relaxed manner, even though his delivery lacks passionate inflection. One gets the sense that the respected financial expert is indeed telling us his story as opposed to simply reading printed pages; it's just that Geithner's style of conversation reflects his cerebral and technocratic nature. In the later sections of the recording, Geithner does project a bit of intensity when defending the record of the Obama administration with regard to the state of the U.S. economy, though the tone is not so much that of a rabid true believer as a numbers expert frustrated by the ignorance voiced by critics.
