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CNBC
Geithner to Be Nominated as Treasury Secretary
Friday November 21, 3:56 pm ET
President-elect Barack Obama plans to announce his economic team on Monday as part of an effort to reassure markets and will name New York Fed President Tim Geithner his nominee for Treasury Secretary, NBC News has learned.
Geithner was a U.S. Treasury Department official under both Bob Rubin and Larry Summers and has been with Treasury since 1988. Geithner's nomination is anticipated barring last-minute changes, NBC reported.
Geithner has helped current Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and his team manage the ongoing Wall Street bailout.
Obama also is expected to tap New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as U.S. secretary of commerce, NBC News said on Friday.
Richardson, a former United Nations ambassador and energy secretary during President Bill Clinton's administration, had been an early supporter of Obama after dropping his own presidential ambitions.
US stocks violently reversed earlier losses following the Geithner news, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting a greater than 300-point move to the upside.
Private sector economists generally applauded Geithner's nomination, saying he had performed well during the financial crisis, but some questioned his overall experience.
"I would say the market is going to like it," said James Awad, managing director of Zephyr Capital. "[Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry] Summers was more controversial. People will view it as a safe choice, an experienced guy.
"There's a little bit of a question because he's associated with the bailout," Awad added, "and that's still a work in progress and not totally successful. There will be a few who'll be upset because he's associated with the TARP."
"Geithner is a solid choice. He has shown more independent thinking," said Former Sen. Don Riegle, who chaired the Senate Banking Committee during the savings and loan crisis. "He has also seen this financial system meltdown from the inside ... he can offer highly skilled and pragmatic advice to Obama."
"He will understand the urgent necessity of assembling a world class team at Treasury ... and be able to attract the talents he needs," Riegle continued. "This choice will also facilitate close cooperation between the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, [which is] much-needed given the increasing scale of the economic crisis."
"He is battle-tested with Rubin and Summers and has done an excellent job orchestrating the Fed's response to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," said Chris Rupkey, economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. "A crisis manager par excellence who will hit the ground running, as he has been on the case since the Global funding crisis began way back in July 2007. I cannot think of a better choice who will mesh seamlessly with the Fed and FDIC."
According to the New York Fed Web site, Geithner graduated from Dartmouth with a bachelor's degree in government and Asian studies in 1983 and from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with a master's in International Economics and East Asian Studies in 1985.
He joined the Treasury in 1988 and worked in three administrations, serving as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1999 to 2001 under Rubin and Summers.
He become New York Fed president in 2003. In that capacity, he worked as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the group responsible for formulating the nation's monetary policy.
Ich kann mir mein Urteil erlauben. Erstens kenne ich die Person nicht, zweitens hatte ich mein faieren Anteil König Pilsener auf der After Work Party. Da sollte man vorsichtig mit seinen Urteilen sein.
Permanent
Wall Street Cheers Choice Of Geithner for Treasury
GEITHNER, OBAMA, TREASURY SECRETARY, NY FED, NEW YORK FED, FEDERAL RESERVE PRESIDENT, NY FED PRESIDENT, TIMOTHY GEITHNERCNBC.com| 21 Nov 2008 | 05:06 PM ET
The choice of Timothy Geithner to be the next Treasury Secretary was greeted enthusiastically on Wall Street and sparked a huge rally in stocks.
An hour before the market closed, NBC News reported that President-elect Obama had picked Geithner, currently the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, for Treasury.
Obama, who will formally announce his economic team on Monday, also will tap New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as Secretary of Commerce, NBC News said.
The New York Times, meanwhile, said New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has agreed to become Obama's Secretary of State, although a spokesman for Clinton said she has not made a final decision.
Geithner, 47, is a career Treasury official who has worked at the department under five secretaries since 1988. He was undersecretary of international economics from 1998 to 2001 and served in several other Treasury posts. He become New York Fed president in 2003.
"A fantastic choice to help lead the financial markets out of the wilderness,'' said Chris Rupkey, senior economist at The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York. "A crisis manager par excellence who will hit the ground running as he has been on the case since the global funding crisis began way back in July 2007.''
Bookmarks for the Investor:
US stocks reversed earlier losses following the report of Geithner's nomination, with the Dow closing up nearly 500 points.
Geithner's task will be enormous. The US is facing a worsening economy, prolonged credit and housing crises as well as rising unemployment. Geithner, however, has been closely involved in federal efforts to deal with the financial crisis, having worked with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
"Geithner is a solid choice. He has shown more independent thinking," said Former Sen. Don Riegle, who chaired the Senate Banking Committee during the savings and loan crisis. "He has also seen this financial system meltdown from the inside ... he can offer highly skilled and pragmatic advice to Obama."
More from CNBC:
Some, however, think that Geithner might be too closely linked to the highly criticized management of the $700 Wall Street bailout fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
"There's a little bit of a question because he's associated with the bailout," said James Awad, managing director of Zephyr Capital. "And that's still a work in progress and not totally successful. There will be a few who'll be upset because he's associated with the TARP."
Still, "I would think the market is going to like it," Awad added. "People will view it as a safe choice, an experienced guy."
According to the New York Fed Web site, Geithner graduated from Dartmouth with a bachelor’s degree in government and Asian studies in 1983 and from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with a master’s in International Economics and East Asian Studies in 1985.
He joined the Treasury in 1988 and worked in three administrations, serving as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1999 to 2001 under Rubin and Summers.
He become New York Fed president in 2003. In that capacity, he worked as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the group responsible for formulating the nation's monetary policy.
Richardson, meanwhile, is a former United Nations ambassador and energy secretary during President Bill Clinton's administration, had been an early supporter of Obama after dropping his own presidential ambitions.
By Andreas Hippin
November 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Somali pirates, renegade Somalis known for hijacking ships for ransom in the Gulf of Aden, are negotiating a purchase of Citigroup.
The pirates would buy Citigroup with new debt and their existing cash stockpiles, earned most recently from hijacking numerous ships, including most recently a $200 million Saudi Arabian oil tanker. The Somali pirates are offering up to $0.10 per share for Citigroup, pirate spokesman Sugule Ali said earlier today. The negotiations have entered the final stage, Ali said.
"You may not like our price, but we are not in the business of paying for things. Be happy we are in the mood to
offer the shareholders anything," said Ali.
The pirates will finance part of the purchase by selling new Pirate Ransom Backed Securities. The PRBS's are backed by the cash flows from future ransom payments from hijackings in the Gulf of Aden. Moody's and S&P have already issued their top investment grade ratings for the PRBS's.
Head pirate, Ubu Kalid Shandu, said: "We need a bank so that we have a place to keep all of our ransom money. Thankfully, the dislocations in the capital markets has allowed us to purchase Citigroup at an attractive valuation and to take advantage of TARP capital to grow the business even faster."
Story: U.S. stocks sharply lower, with focus on auto, financial woes (1 day ago)
6 Replies
Where has all the money gone? From market highs 5 months ago to where we are now. Who has the money?
Neuer Look in der Citi-Zweigstelle - die Augenklappe wird als hoch-modisches Assessoir entdeckt
www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/business/22citi.html
Citigroup, Under Siege, Holds Talks With U.S.
With the sharp stock-market decline for Citigroup rapidly becoming a full-blown crisis of confidence, the company’s executives on Friday entered into talks with federal officials about how to stabilize the strugglingfinancial giant.
In a series of tense meetings and telephone calls, the executives and officials weighed several options, including whether to replace Citigroup’s chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, or sell all or part of the company.
Other options discussed included a public endorsement from the government or a new financial lifeline, people involved in the talks said.
The course of action, however, remained uncertain on Friday night, these people said, and other options may yet emerge. But after a year of gaping losses and an accelerating decline in share price, Citigroup, which has $2 trillion in assets and operations in scores of countries, is running out of time, analysts said.
After a board meeting early Friday morning, Citigroup’s management and some board members held several calls with Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, and with the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy F. Geithner, who later emerged as President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be Treasury secretary.
As Citigroup’s stock sank during the day, falling 68 cents to close at $3.87, the Federal Reserve was carefully monitoring how much money corporations and other customers were withdrawing from the bank, people involved in the discussions said.
The Fed was trying to ascertain whether the tumult in the stock market could escalate into something worse.
So far, these people said, most customers and clients remained committed to Citigroup.
But with Citigroup’s troubles opening a new chapter in the long-running financial crisis, government officials said that the Treasury Department was considering whether to ask for the second half of the $700 billion rescue fund approved by Congress in September.
It was unclear whether any of that money would be used to make a cash infusion into Citigroup, which received $25 billion from the government in October. A second financial rescue for banks might be difficult politically at a time that the struggling auto industry is being turned away in Washington.
As Citigroup’s fortunes diminished on Friday, Mr. Pandit, the company’s embattled chief executive, went on the offensive. He worked the phones and held a companywide call to shore up the confidence of anxious employees.
Later in the day, the company held a similar call with large corporate customers. On Sunday, Citigroup plans to run full-page advertisements in major newspapers that acknowledge “our financial markets have been tested in unprecedented ways,” but argue that the company has a broad range of businesses and enough management expertise to pull through. In a nod to the company’s slogan, the text concludes: “That’s why now, more than ever, you can feel confident that Citi never sleeps.”
Still, Citigroup’s executives are not expected to sleep much this weekend as they continue to pursue contingency plans, including what they might need to calm anxious investors before the stock market opens on Monday morning.
One maneuver that Mr. Pandit has championed is for the Securities and Exchange Commission to reinstate the “uptick rule,” which prevents short-sellers from betting against companies whose stock price is falling. Mr. Pandit has been lobbying the S.E.C. for the past week, as have other Wall Street chiefs.
Mr. Pandit and others have suggested that Citigroup is a victim of short-sellers, which some have blamed for speeding the demise of other financial companies this year.
In September, Richard X. Bove, an analyst at Ladenburg Thalmann, predicted that short-sellers would turn their attention to larger and larger financial companies, including Citigroup, which he said at the time was strong enough to withstand the pressure.
“They’re going to hit a company that is too well grounded, too well capitalized, and I think that will be Citigroup,” he said. Still, while Citigroup is widely regarded as too big and too interconnected to be allowed to fail, its immediate future is uncertain. Executives at other financial firms said that there are not many options left, and that Citigroup’s stock has reached a level that may force government action.
“The reason you have to ‘save’ Citibank is you cannot allow this hysteria,” said Peter J. Solomon, chairman of the Peter J. Solomon Company, a small investment bank.
Investors and executives at other banks said that one way the bank might be able to give itself some breathing room would be for Mr. Pandit, who became chief executive less than a year ago, to step down.
Executives in New York have also begun pointing out that Citigroup has a huge global presence. They suggested that perhaps a government bailout should involve money from other countries in addition to the United States.
“If there’s a flight from Citi’s stock, that’s unfortunate, but I don’t think that’s the government’s business,” said David M. Walker, the president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and a former United States comptroller general.
Mr. Walker said that the government should be concerned about Citigroup only if there were a run on the bank that threatened the financial system. The government should not, he said, be concerned about shareholders.
Some executives, however, argued that it was important to protect Citigroup’s shareholders because if they lose their investment, that will send other bank stocks diving.
Among the other ideas being bandied about Washington and the halls of Citigroup would be an assisted merger between Citigroup and another major bank. The merger might be structured with government assistance based on the blueprint that was developed for the Wachovia and Citigroup merger.
That deal ultimately did not go through because Wells Fargo stepped in with a higher offer, but it would have involved the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sharing the losses on $312 billion of Wachovia’s loans with Citigroup. Citigroup would have absorbed the first $42 billion in losses, and the government would have absorbed the rest. The F.D.I.C. would have been given $12 billion in warrants and preferred shares of Citigroup in exchange.
That structure could be used in a merger, but this time around, the government would be absorbing losses on Citigroup’s loans. But it remains unclear what other bank is in a strong enough position to merge with Citigroup.
Inside Citigroup on Friday, some angry senior executives said that the government had “allowed” Wells Fargo to take Wachovia from them, people at the firm said. They argued that had Citigroup and Wachovia been allowed to merge “we wouldn’t be in this position,” one executive said.
Another option might be for the government to purchase a large chunk of Citigroup’s assets in one swoop. Such an action could be structured similarly to the proposed deal in Switzerland for UBS. A spokesman for UBS, Mark Arena, said on Friday that the arrangement would allow UBS to have “one of the cleanest balance sheets of our peers.”
At the time of the deal’s announcement in October, Jean-Pierre Roth, president of the Swiss National Bank, said the government had the time to wait for the values of the assets to improve. “UBS does not have time,” Mr. Roth said.
Denn für Bilanzen - insbesondere die der Citigroup - gilt:
On the left side there's nothing right
On the right side there's nothing left
Zeichenerklärung
left = links = backbord
right = rechts = steuerbord
die Citigroup für 10 Cents pro Aktie übernehmen wollen (-> # 33784)
Die Piraten haben im letzten Jahr 150 Mio. Dollar erpresst, was ihr AAA-Rating nunmehr vollends rechtfertigt. Allerdings haben die Piraten auch teils "horrende Kosten", die etwa bei der Entführung des saudischen Supertankers anfielen.
Spiegel, 21. November 2008, 19:39 Uhr
GOLDGRUBE GOLF VON ADEN
Die Freibeuterei im Golf von Aden ist lukrativ: Somalische Piraten haben laut Kenias Regierung binnen zwölf Monaten mehr als 150 Millionen Dollar erpresst. Fachleute warnen: Wer zahlt, heizt das Geschäft noch an. Die Täter selbst haben eine kuriose Begründung für ihre hohen Forderungen.
Nairobi - Sie fühlen sich ermutigt, machen weiter und werden immer dreister: der kenianische Außenminister Moses Wetangula warnt Eigner entführter Schiffe ausdrücklich davor, auf die Forderungen von Piraten einzugehen.
Denn für die Täter ist die Piraterie ein Riesengeschäft: Somalische Freibeuter haben nach kenianischen Regierungsangaben in den vergangenen zwölf Monaten Lösegeldzahlungen von mehr als 150 Millionen Dollar (knapp 120 Millionen Euro) erhalten.
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