By Jeffrey Meyer | May 18, 2014 | 12:28 PM EDT

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, May 18 to promote his new memoir Stress Test, yet host Bob Schieffer barely touched on the most controversial aspect, that the Obama Administration had directed him to spin negative aspects of Obama’s policies. 

Schieffer briefly asked his guest “Did the administration ever try to get you to put a more positive spin on things than you thought the situation deserved?" After Geithner said he “never had that experience” the CBS host quickly moved on to an unrelated topic without challenging his contradictory claim. [See video below.]

By Brad Wilmouth | May 13, 2014 | 9:49 AM EDT

Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's Fox and Friends on FNC, conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham asserted that former Obama administration Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should have resigned when he was asked to lie about the role Social Security plays in the federal government's fiscal problems.

After a quote from Geithner's book, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, in which he recalled that Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer asked him to claim publicly that Social Security does not play a role in the budget deficit as a "dog whistle" to the left. [See video below.] 

By Scott Whitlock | May 12, 2014 | 6:34 PM EDT

Tim Geithner appeared on Good Morning America, Monday, to promote his new book. While co-host George Stephanopoulos avoided negative comments about the Obama administration, he made sure to tout praise of Hillary Clinton and to lobby for an endorsement. After the former Treasury Secretary explained how he recommended Clinton as a possible replacement, the GMA anchor enthused, "Is she your candidate for president next time around?" 

Geithner dodged and the host repeated, "Is she your candidate for president next time around?" Stephanopoulos also pressed the ex-cabinet official from the left, wondering, "So, what's the simple answer, then, to critics like Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, who say you focused too much on big financial institution, not enough on family?" 

By Matthew Balan | December 6, 2012 | 3:20 PM EST

"Militantly non-partisan" Major Garrett sounded more like an Obama administration flack on Thursday's CBS This Morning as he spotlighted the President's latest P.R. stunt. Garrett noted Obama's plan to visit a northern Virginia middle-class family and claimed that the Democrat was underlining the "self-evident point that if the there is a deal and their taxes aren't raised by about $2,000, they'll be happier and spend more money."

The correspondent also uncritically pointed out how Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner signaled that the White House was willing to go over the fiscal cliff if their demand for higher taxes isn't satisfied.

By Tom Blumer | August 7, 2012 | 11:59 PM EDT

Since Mitt Romney is supposedly responsible for the death from cancer of a woman who died in 2006, seven years after the presumptive GOP nominee left Bain Capital, it seems more than fair to talk about what has resulted from the Obama administration's blatant favoritism towards UAW members while shafting former Delphi salaried workers.

Tonight, the Associated Press's Adwatch entry by Stephen Braun actually calls out the Obama super-PAC Priorities USA, specifically saying that the assertion by Joe Soptic, the woman's widower, "that Romney bears some blame in his wife's death is not backed up factually in the ad." Fair enough, but, especially because it was in the news today, let's look at the Delphi situation.

By Tom Blumer | July 26, 2012 | 1:34 AM EDT

No matter how inane or damning his comments and answers to inquiries, it appears that Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner can continue to count on favorable coverage from the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, aka the Administration's Protection.

The AP's Marcy Gordon, with the help of her story's headline writer, made Geither's appearance before the House Committee on Financial Services all about partisanship until near the very end. Incredibly, she also relayed a very important question committee members asked about Geithner's use of an interest rate he knew was being lowballed by British banks as the basis for determining the interest rate on Treasury bailout loans while he was still head of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve Bank -- but didn't tell readers what his answer was. Excerpts follow (bolds are mine):

By Matthew Balan | July 24, 2012 | 6:22 PM EDT

Charlie Rose omitted mentioning the continuing high unemployment rate as he interviewed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Tuesday's CBS This Morning. Rose also forwarded a criticism Geithner from the left, that the Cabinet official was "too friendly to the banks, because he knew them from his years at the New York Fed."

The anchor also didn't challenge the Obama administration official's assertion that keeping all of the current tax rates would be a "deeply irresponsible thing to do fiscally and economically now. If you do it, it costs a trillion dollars over ten years - a trillion dollars over ten years, which we don't have and we're not going to go out and borrow from other countries to support in that context."

By Tom Blumer | July 16, 2012 | 4:53 PM EDT

Here's how a "Business Highlights" item at the Associated Press summarized the situation between Timothy Geithner and London banks whose officials had admitted to rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate ("Libor") on Friday evening: "The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released documents Friday that show it learned five years ago of big banks understating their borrowing costs to manipulate a key interest rate. The documents also show Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was then president of the New York Fed, urged the Bank of England to make the rate-setting process more transparent."

Today, Charles Gasparino at the New York Post called total BS such pathetic media spin (bolds are mine):

By Tom Blumer | July 11, 2012 | 12:42 PM EDT

Not only is the Associated Press aptly currently described as the Administration's Press -- as least as long as the White House's current occupant remains there -- it also seems to be serving as the Administration's Protection.

In a story about the "Lie-bor" scandal, wherein British banks have admitted to colluding to set the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) -- arguably the world’s most important benchmark for interest rates -- artificially low, AP reporter Martin Crutsinger "somehow" forgot that current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was President of the New York Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank during much of the time period in which Congressional investigators are interested. Clearly, they want to know what Geithner knew, and when he knew it. The first three paragraphs of Crutsinger's writeup, followed by his sole context-free mention of Geithner, follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

By Tom Blumer | May 27, 2012 | 10:09 PM EDT

A Los Angeles Times editorial on May 23, naturally accompanied by a dour photo of House Speaker John Boehner, stated as if it's an indisputable fact that the August 2011 debt deal raised the ceiling by "enough to last until the end of 2012 or early 2013." A Saturday AP report by Ken Thomas and Jim Kuhnhenn so filled with distortions that it's virtually unreadable asserted, again as if it's a no-doubt fact, that hitting the limit is "more than eight months away," putting the ceiling-busting date at about January 31, 2013. Just a few of many other examples with late-December or later assumptions baked in are here (to be fair, this one frames it as a Geithner estimation), here, and here.

The real numbers, combined with the experience of the past two years, indicate that there is a good chance not only that we're not going to be that lucky, but that the government could even hit the ceiling before Election Day.

By NB Staff | August 3, 2011 | 11:07 AM EDT

In June, the Treasury Department announced that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was considering resigning once the debt crisis was averted. With the debt limit deal passed yesterday, the speculation of his departure date is once again making the airwaves.

Leaving now would allow Geithner to leave on a much better note than he could have, but could also create a vacancy in an important cabinet position in an already weak economy. Do you think now is the best time for Geithner to resign? Let us know what you think in the comments.

By Scott Whitlock | August 2, 2011 | 11:44 AM EDT

Apparently, cutting a $3.7 trillion budget by $21 billion will hurt the economy. Talking to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Tuesday, Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos worried about the just-agreed to debt deal: "But, don't you think that any deficit reduction now will hurt the attempts of the economy to recover?"

The former Clinton White House official turned journalist highlighted "economists who say cuts like this will make our weak economy weaker and cost Americans jobs." In total, Stephanopoulos raised the question three times, wondering, "So, this won't cost us jobs?"