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Geithner's Book Has a Title: 'Stress Examination'

Photo
Mr. Geithner, pictured in 2012. Credit Chris Usher/CBS News, via Associated Press
For the title of his memoirs, Timothy F. Geithner has employed a somewhat wonky phrase evocative of the financial crisis: "Stress Examination."

That title, announced on Tuesday past the Crown Publishing Grouping, gives a flavour of the coming memoir by Mr. Geithner, who as president of the Federal Reserve Banking company of New York then equally Treasury secretary was a central player in the regime'south attempt to fight the fiscal crisis and economic recession. The publisher said the book would be released on May thirteen.

The title refers to simulations that regulators ran in the aftermath of the crunch to estimate the power of banks to withstand shocks. Merely Mr. Geithner, who starts a new job in March as president of the private equity house Warburg Pincus, is teasing broader pregnant from those 2 words.

"The fiscal crunch was a stress exam of our nation, an extreme existent-time challenge of a republic's ability to act when the globe needed creative, decisive, politically unpalatable activity," Mr. Geithner said in a argument posted to a new website to promote the book, whose dust jacket features a motion picture of the sometime Treasury secretary with furrowed brow.

Another central figure in the government's response team, Ben Southward. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, told The Associated Press on Mon that he, too, would write his memoirs. "I want people to understand what we knew, when we knew it, how we made decisions and how we dealt with the enormous economic uncertainty," Mr. Bernanke said, adding that he wanted to explain why the Fed's deportment were "the correct thing to do."

Similarly, Mr. Geithner's volume appears intended to answer lingering questions and provide insight into the government'southward thinking. Judging by Mr. Geithner'south argument on Tuesday, the book will argue — not surprisingly — that the regime's response to the financial crisis was ultimately successful in rescuing the economy.

"We made mistakes, information technology was messy, and the damage was devastating and long-lasting. And yet, at the moments of nigh extreme peril, the United States was able to blueprint and execute a remarkably effective strategy," Mr. Geithner said.

"The small-scale group of key policy makers worked together surprisingly well, arguing, agonizing, sometimes agreeing to disagree, but mostly trying to go the right answer and minimize the fourth dimension wasted on bureaucratic disharmonize. Nosotros saved the economic system from a failing financial system, though we lost the country doing information technology," he connected.

Among the questions that Mr. Geithner is seeking to respond are: "How did we decide who got bailed out? Why didn't we nationalize more banks, or let more banks fail? How did we manage to convince the left we were Wall Street'due south wingmen while convincing Wall Street nosotros were Che Guevaras in suits? Why didn't we do more (or less) about the housing market place? Why didn't we become more than (or less) fiscal stimulus? Why isn't the economy booming again?

"And what really happened with Lehman, anyway?"

The book'southward subtitle, "Reflections on Fiscal Crises," suggests that the account addresses more than just the crisis of 2008.

"All financial crises are dissimilar, just they take a lot in common, and there are lessons to acquire from this extreme 1 that tin can aid policy makers and the public during the adjacent one," Mr. Geithner said. "I hope this story can assist illuminate these lessons."

The announcement on Tuesday provides an answer to a guessing game played by members of the financial media a yr ago. Using the Twitter hashtag, #GeithnerBookTitles, reporters and others provided their own humorous suggestions for the title of Mr. Geithner's memoir.

One entry, by Justin Miller, who was then an editor at New York magazine, came shut to the mark: