Geithner: 'It's going to take us a while'

by Mark Silva

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, warning that it will ""take us a while'' to get out of the economic "mess'' the nation faces, also says banks will need some more federal help.

'it's very important for people to understand that, you know, it took us a long time to get into this mess,'' Geithner said in his debut on the Sunday morning news show circuit today, in an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on This Week. "It's going to take us a while to get out of this. Progress is not going to be even. It's not going to be steady.

"Now banks are going to need -- some banks are going to need -- some large amounts of assistance,'' Geithner said, "and we're going to make sure that that assistance comes with conditions, designed to make sure they restructure, provide accountability on boards of management, that these institutions emerge cleaner, stronger going forward.''

Here, courtesy of ABC News, is a transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hello again. Last week, he was under fire; this
week, he was everywhere, rolling out new proposals to shore up
America's finances. And today, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner joins
us for his first Sunday morning interview. Welcome to "This Week."

GEITHNER: Thanks, George. Good to be here.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you lay out the first phrase of the bank plan
back in February. The Dow drops 382 points. This week, you laid out
the new phase of the bank plan, 500-point rise over the course of the
week. Do you feel like the comeback kid?

GEITHNER: George, we're facing still a lot of challenges. Can't
judge a plan on the reaction one day one week. But we've done a lot
in these eight weeks. You know, the president's housing plan has
already helped bring down interest rates. Millions of Americans now
are going to be able to take advantage of lower interest rates. If
you take a typical family living in a $180,000 home, the rate
reductions we've already seen could save them as much as $2,000 a
year.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And we did see a lot of encouraging signs in the
economy this week. New home sales were up. Mortgage refinances, as
you pointed out, were up. Even durable goods orders were up, and
inventories went down. And of course, a 20-percent rise in the stock
market over the last couple of weeks. What does this tell you? What
should Americans know right now about where the economy is and whether
recover is in sight?

GEITHNER: Well, these are encouraging signs, and it's good when
you see the new surprise on the upside, rather than the other way.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you were surprised?

GEITHNER: Well, I think these are, again, they came in above
expectations, much (inaudible) -- that's a very good sign. But it's
very important for people to understand that, you know, it took us a
long time to get into this mess. It's going to take us a while to get
out of this. Progress is not going to be even. It's not going to be
steady. The really important thing is that the administration is
going to do what is necessary working with the Congress to making sure
we're putting in place very powerful programs to get Americans back to
work.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're barraged by economic statistics every
day. I'm sure there are a bunch of screens in your office. What is
the single most important statistic that you are looking at, that
you're tracking to say, when this turns, we're out of the woods?

GEITHNER: There is no single number you have to look at. You
need to look at what people are doing with the income and the savings
they have. Are they spending? Are businesses expanding? Are they
hiring more people? Are interest rates coming down? Is credit
starting to flow again? You have to look at that broad suite of
things. There's no single number that gives you the health -- the
measure of the health of the economy.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What is the next shoe to drop? In talking to
business leaders over the last couple of weeks, I hear a lot of
concern about the commercial real estate market. And from bankers
especially, they're concerned that as unemployment rises, their credit
card defaults could really go through the roof?

GEITHNER: There's no doubt there's more losses ahead for the
financial system, but George, we've had a lot of adjustment already.
One of the things about the American economy is, change happens here
with brutal force, much more quickly than it happens around the world.
And we've already had -- you know, we're 18 months into this, and
we've had...

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's a long recession.

GEITHNER: It is a long recession, and it's a -- it's been
dramatic and painful and brutal in some ways, in part because
adjustments happen here so quickly. But that's a good thing too,
because that means more of that adjustment process is behind us.

Now, the important thing, though, is that we keep at it. You
know, the big mistake governments make in recessions is they put the
brakes on too early.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is that what happened during the depression? Is
that what Franklin Roosevelt did?

GEITHNER: That's one thing that happened in the depression.
It's happened in Japan, too. It's happened in a lot of countries in
the world. They see that first glimmer of light, and the impetus to
policy fades and people are putting on the brakes, and we're not going
to do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But I wonder about, as you look in the long term
-- and you believe we're obviously going to come out of this at some
point. You believe the recovery will start, what, the end of this
year?

GEITHNER: Most private economists believe you're going to find a
more durable bottom in the second half of this year and then have
growth come back.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But even if we come out of that, a lot of
economists worry that this recovery is going to feel like a recession,
that we're going to have a jobless recovery. Very -- I see you
nodding your head. You believe that?

GEITHNER: I think a lot -- people worry about this. You have a
recession like this, which is born out of a period where people
borrowed too much, and we let our financial system take on too much
risk. The risk in that conduct is you have a longer, slower, more
gradual process of adjustment and recovery.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And some experts believe that we're really
entering a brand new world. I was struck by a piece of research I saw
from a branch of Citigroup. This was -- and I'm going to share it
with our viewers. They're saying, "Don't be in a state of denial, we
are really entering a brand new economic world even after the
recovery, because for so long the U.S. has been acting like a
leveraged hedge fund."

And they go on to say: "Not only is the lifestyle and wealth
creation likely to be unsustainable going forward, but if you believe,
as we do, that we've been operating in a leveraged economy, then the
new normal in terms of economic data, profitability of companies, et
cetera, may be a shadow of the past."

So do Americans have to get used to the idea that the boom times
really aren't coming back?

GEITHNER: Well, we're going to emerge out of this stronger. And
we're going to do that because the president and the Congress are
going to make sure that we have the government doing a better job of
things it needs to do.

So we have a more productive economy in the future, better
education outcomes, better health care system, better energy policies,
stronger infrastructure.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Stronger, but as affluent as we were in the
past?

GEITHNER: Well, you know, we want to have sustainable growth.
We don't have -- we don't want to have a recovery which is going to be
artificial and short-lived, just produce the seeds of the next crisis.

We want to have a durable recovery based on a stronger foundation
that has a stronger, more productive economy emerging through it where
the gains are more broadly shared across the economy as a whole.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So income inequality goes down?

GEITHNER: It should go down. Again, you know, if you look at
the record of performance in the '90s, you know, we had very strong
productivity growth during a period of fiscal discipline, fiscal
responsibility, strong private investment, and the gains were shared
much more broadly.

We can do that as a country, but it requires getting this
government to do a better job of doing things only governments can do.
That's why I assume important we get better outcomes. That's why
fixing our health care system and get costs growing more slowly is so
important. That's why we need a better energy policy. And that's why
infrastructure needs to be improved.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But do you really believe we're going to get
back to what we saw in the 1990s in terms of the kind of affluence we
saw across the board?

GEITHNER: George, I think Americans should be optimistic about
the future of this country. We are a strong, remarkably resilient
country. We are still the most productive economy in the world by
many measures.

We have a university system that is the envy of the world.
People with an idea still want to come to the -- America to grow
business, build on that idea. That's a great source of strength for
our recovery.

But we need this government, though, to do a better job of doing
what governments have to do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you are obviously trying to do that with
your plans to shore up the banking system. You laid out what to do
about these legacy toxic assets in the banking system this week.
And a lot of people are wondering, will it actually work? The
stock market definitely seemed to like it, so did a lot of experts.
As you know, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman was not a
fan. And I want to show what he wrote this week in The New York
Times.

He said when he read this plan, it gave him a sense of despair.
And he went on to say: "Financial executives literally bet their banks
on the belief that there was no housing bubble and the related belief
that unprecedented levels of household debt were no problem. They
lost that bet and no amount of financial hocus-pocus, for that is what
the Geithner plan amounts to, will change that fact."

Financial hocus-pocus.

GEITHNER: George, this is a piece of a series of initiatives
we've put in place to help get the financial system doing what it
needs to do, which is to provide the credit necessary for recovery.
You know, economies depend on financial systems. They're what is --
provide the oxygen, the blood that economies need to grow.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But he says it's just not going to work, that
these banks are insolvent, and that even if you put more capital in
them, eventually you're going to have to take them over.

GEITHNER: But I just wanted to -- let's step back for a sec. So
this is piece of a broad framework of initiatives we're undertaking to
help restore the strength of the financial system. Part of our plan
-- a core part of our plan involves making sure banks have enough
capital to provide the lending we're going to need to get recovery
back on track.

Now banks are going to need -- some banks are going to need some
large amounts of assistance, and we're going to make sure that that
assistance comes with conditions, designed to make sure they
restructure, provide accountability on boards of management, that
these institutions emerge cleaner, stronger going forward.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But one of the things you're hearing from the
banks is in part because they don't want all of these new
restrictions, they may not sell these legacy assets.

GEITHNER: That is a risk. And it's very important that people
recognize that. To get out of this, we need banks to take a chance on
businesses, to take risk again. We had a long period where banks were
taking too much risk. The challenge for us is that they take too
little now.

And for us to get through this, we need investors and banks to be
willing to take a change again on providing credit to that business
that has got a great idea and needs to grow, expand.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, one of the other criticisms is that the
investors, especially in the plans to buy up these toxic assets, are
not taking all that much of a risk. They're going to put up $6 and
they're going to get 93 percent from the government. We will share on
the upside, yes, but they're protected against huge losses.

GEITHNER: George, let's just step back for a sec. The problem
we're facing on our financial system is that we -- banks made a bunch
of loans, backed real estate that are now facing losses. And those
loans are clogging up the financial system.

They're taking up room that could otherwise be used to provide
new credits to a business or a family. Now we have two choices, we
can let -- leave that as it is, hope that banks earn their way out of
this over time. That would be a mistake. That would leave us with a
strong -- with a deeper, longer recession.

We're not prepared to adopt that basic strategy.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But there is a third choice...

GEITHNER: There is another choice -- let me say, there's another
choice that a lot of people suggest is the government itself comes in,
buys these assets, sets the pricing of an asset, takes on all of the
risk in that strategy.

And that would leave the taxpayer taking on much more risk, much
greater risk of loss over time. We don't think that's an appropriate
approach.

The approach we're adopting, though, is to have private investors
come in and put their capital risk alongside the government. That
helps make sure we're using their incentive to set the price for these
assets, rather than having the government set the price and risk
overpaying.

This is a conservative structure. It's, sort of, basically like
what happens when you buy a house, put money down, borrow it to buy a
house. It's a more conservative structure than banks typically run
with. And we think it's a much better way, again, to make sure the
taxpayer's not taking on risk the taxpayer should not take.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're saying your proposal is the middle
course. I guess there's a fourth option that Senator McCain lays out,
other Republicans have laid it out. He says, just go in and shut them
down.

GEITHNER: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: These banks ought to be shut down. He says they
should be taken over, their management and shareholders suffer the
consequences, and their assets resold to private-sector entities.

What's wrong with that idea?

GEITHNER: Well, George, the approach we're adopting, again, is
to make sure that there's capital in the financial system where we
need capital. And that capital will come with conditions.

As the senator said, make sure these institutions emerge
stronger, not weaker. We don't want to be sustaining the weak at the
expense of the strong. But our system...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But is that plan B, if your plan fails, is that
plan B, go in, take them over, shut them down eventually, unwind their
assets?

GEITHNER: The way I would describe it, George, is that we need
to move to make sure the banking system is able to provide the credit
recovery needs.

When they do that, again, with strong conditions to protect the
taxpayer, make sure they restructure where they need to restructure.

But, you know, our system doesn't just depend on banks. In a
typical -- in a typical market, more than 40 percent of lending comes
from outside of banks, so in the securities markets, through the
secondary markets that are so critical to student loans, small-
business lending, consumer lending.

And so we have a very aggressive program in place to help provide
credit directly, going around banks, get those markets working again.

Now, this is not something any country's faced in the past. We
are moving much more aggressively than the U.S. moved in the S&L
crisis, than Japan moved in the 90s. We're moving at a much earlier
stage to help preempt failure, make the system stronger, with tough
conditions to protect the taxpayer.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But, as you said, this is likely to cost far
more in capital injections for the banks. And I guess the big
question is, where is that money going to come from?

According to our calculations, there was only about, going into
today, about $32 billion, maybe a little more, left in the TARP, the
financial rescue program.

Late last night, the Treasury Department said that number is
actually far higher, more than $130 billion. That is a huge
difference. And it is the first time the Treasury Department has ever
put a number on what is left over.

Where did you come up with that extra $100 billion?

GEITHNER: George, we have roughly $135 billion left of
uncommitted resources. Less is out the door, but in terms of, if you
look at what's not committed yet, it's roughly, you know, $135
billion.

Now, that -- that estimate includes a judgment, a very
conservative judgment about how much money is likely to come back from
banks, that are strong enough not to need this capital, now, to get
through a recession.

But that's a reasonably conservative estimate. And it gives us
-- and this is very important -- substantial resources to move ahead
with this broad-based suite of initiatives to help get the financial
system back in the business of providing credit.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So does that mean, now, that with this $130
billion, if you're correct, you're going to take care of the auto
companies; you're going to take care of unforeseen problems; these new
capital injections in the banks.

Earlier in the year, the president and you seemed very concerned
that -- and you warned the Congress -- we're going to be coming back
for money.

Is that less likely now, now that you have more than $130 billion
left in the TARP?

GEITHNER: George, the important thing is that we are going to
work with the Congress to make sure that we have the resources needed
to do this right.

Again, the lesson of financial crises is governments tend to do
too little; they wait too long to escalate.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Right, but I talk to people on Capitol Hill a
lot, and there is no support, right now, for adding more money to the
TARP.

Can you get through the rest of this year with the money you
have?

GEITHNER: We have substantial resources. We're going to use
them quickly, as carefully as we can, make sure they're diverted to
things that are going to get credit flowing again. And we'll cross
that bridge when ewe come to it, in terms of whether we need
additional resources.

And, of course, if we come to that point, we'll go to the
Congress and give them the strongest case possible and help them
understand why this would be cheaper over the long run, for us to move
aggressively...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: But are you farther away from the bridge than
you thought you'd be a few months ago?

GEITHNER: No, I think we're about where we were. You know, this
is not easy for people. I mean, this is people -- there is a deep
amount of public anger and frustration about the fact the American
economy is suffering so much damage from the consequence of people who
took too much risk.

And, you know, the tragedy of the financial crisis is they are --
the damage is brutal; it's indiscriminate. It affects not just the
people who took too much risk but people who were careful and
responsible in their decisions.

But the important thing is these things don't bring themselves
out without catastrophic damage.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So Congress should be braced for another
request?

GEITHNER: No, I'm not saying that. I just saying that the
important thing -- and Congress, again, has already moved, really,
before the administration took office, to authorize a very substantial
amount of resources. And we're moving very quickly to put those to
work for the American financial system. And where we've done that...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But they took the funds out of the budget to pay
for the next round of bailouts.

GEITHNER: Well, I wouldn't -- you know, that was about '09 -- I
mean, that was about the '010 budget, not the '09 budget. But look
what's happened already, George. You know, where we had moved, and we
moved very, very quickly, much more quickly than governments had
typically in the past. And if you look at what's happened in housing,
even in small-business lending, you're seeing significant effects
already in opening up these markets, bringing interest rates down, and
that has very powerful effects in the American economy.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about -- last week was a much worse
week for you than this week. AIG, the whole outrage over the bonuses.
And one of the members of Congress you've worked closely with, Charles
Rangel, the chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, was very tough on
you this Friday over the AIG issue. He lumped you and Secretary of
Treasury Paulson together as coming out of the culture of Wall Street.
Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHARLES B. RANGEL, D-N.Y.: They drink a different water.
They breathe a different air. They don't know what pain is, and so
getting a $6 million bonus is just natural to them. They don't know
shame. They don't know how to apologize.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now, the irony is, you've never worked for a
Wall Street firm...

GEITHNER: Thank you for saying that. For reminding...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But many of the critics have made exactly the
same point, that you're -- because you've worked around it for so
long, you were too beholden to the Wall Street culture, and that's
what explains the blind spot on AIG.

GEITHNER: Not at all, George. As you said, I've worked all my
life in public service. I've spent my entire professional life
helping this government and this country do a better job of dealing
with financial crises and helping protect the economy from the damage
these causes.

I would not spend a penny on helping a bank for the purpose of
helping a bank. Everything we're doing is for the people that depend
on this financial system. Every time we provide assistance to the
financial institutions, it's only because we need them to do a better
job of getting credit to help reduce the risk of a deeper recession.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What did you learn from the whole AIG bonus
experience? How could you have handled it differently?

GEITHNER: You know, I don't think our choices would have
changed. We had no good choices in those conducts. These were
contracts that were set well before the government came in, before Ed
Liddy became CEO. We're a nation of laws. We cannot run this
country, expect our country and our economy to work, businesses to
function if there is an ongoing fear the government will come in and
retroactively change the terms of existing contract. So we had no
good choices in that contracts (ph), but we moved very, very quickly
to make sure that we were going to get them to renegotiate future
payments, that there were strong conditions on compensation going
forward. That's what we're going to do.

Now, where we have the chance to go back and recoup, where there
was evidence of malfeasance of fraud, we will do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And some are saying you should go back and
recoup on another, much bigger issue having to do with AIG, and that's
all the payments they made to their so-called counterparties. Let me
show our viewers who got the money from AIG after they got a
government bailout -- $13 billion to Goldman Sachs; $12 billion to
Bank of America; more than $30 billion to a series of foreign banks.
That has upset a lot of members of Congress. Elijah Cummings and 26
other members of Congress have written a letter saying they want to
know why an attempt wasn't made to renegotiate.

Let me read exactly what they said. "Was any attempt made to
renegotiate and close out these contracts with haircuts? If not, why
not? What was the benefit of the decision to pay 100 percent of face
value to the American taxpayers who provided the bailout funds, and
how did it support the goal of ensuring the stability of the economic
system?"

Now, Goldman Sachs, for example. Their chief financial officer
said he had no material economic exposure to AIG. So why weren't they
forced to take a discount?

GEITHNER: George, we came into this crisis as a country without
the tools necessary to contain the damage of a financial crisis like
this. In a case of a large, complex institution like AIG, the
government has no ability, had no meaningful ability to come in early
to help contain the fire, contain the damage, prevent the spread of
that fire. Restructure the firm, change contracts where necessary,
and helped make sure that the financial system gets through this...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it would have been the right thing to do,
right?

GEITHNER: If we had the legal authority, that's what we would
have done. But without that legal authority, we had no good choices.
We were caught between these terrible choices of letting Lehman fail
-- and you saw the catastrophic damage that caused to the financial
system -- or coming in and putting huge amounts of taxpayer dollars at
risk, like we did at AIG, to keep the thing going, unwind it slowly at
less damage to the ultimate economy and taxpayer.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So how about now, Goldman Sachs is taking other
government money. They got this $13 billion whole from AIG.
Congressman Brad Sherman and others have said, they should give that
$13 billion back.

GEITHNER: George, the important thing is, we have no legal
ability now. That's why I went to Congress last week, to propose a
broad change in resolution authority so that we have the capacity to
do what we do with banks now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But wouldn't it be the right thing for Goldman?

GEITHNER: To give that money back?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Uh-huh.

GEITHNER: Look, again, the government of the United States in a
situation like this has to make sure that we're containing the damage
that might come from default by a major complex financial institution.
We need better legal authority to do that, did not have that authority
coming into this crisis. It's a tragic...

STEPHANOPOULOS: So nothing to be done looking back, but going
forward, that's exactly the authority you would want.

GEITHNER: Absolutely. Our obligation now, again, is to defuse
and help unwind this deeply complicated problem that AIG presents.
But we want to work with the Congress to put in place stronger tools,
stronger resolution authority, so the government can come in more
quickly, earlier, before things have passed the point of no return,
contain the damage, prevent the fire from spreading, restructure the
firm, have it emerge stronger, at less risk to the taxpayer. That's
what we need. We should have had this before this crisis, but we
didn't. But we need to move quickly now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about government debt. A lot of
Americans more and more are concerned about that. According to the
Congressional Budget Office, in 10 years, the government debt will be
82 percent of GDP. And I'm going to read a question that came in from
one of our viewers, Bruce Gower of Rock Hill, South Carolina. He
asks, "how do you justify printing money out of thin air and the
amount of debt you are subjecting future generations to with this
budget? Who cares if roads are smoother if I or my children can't
afford a car to drive because of the hyperinflation that had taken
away all their spending power?"

Are you worried about hyperinflation down the road?

GEITHNER: That's not going to happen in this country, will never
happen.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why?

GEITHNER: Will never happen. Because we have a strong,
independent Fed, with a clear authority from the Congress to keep
inflation low at -- stable at low levels going forward.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The Fed has been putting so much money into the
system.

GEITHNER: But that's not going to create the risk of
hyperinflation in the future.

We have a strong independent Federal Reserve with a very strong
mandate from the Congress, and they will do what's necessary to keep
inflation low and stable over time.

But George, just step back for one second. You know, when I left
the Treasury in 2001, we had large surpluses -- large surpluses
projected. We started this administration with a $1.3 trillion
deficit and a deepening recession, enormously challenging global
financial crisis. The cost of fixing that crisis is going to require
larger deficits in the short term, but the best way to make sure we
get those deficits down in the future is to get recovery established,
get -- make the economy stronger going forward. That's the best way
to get us back on a path to fiscal responsibility.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And from what you were saying earlier, you're
actually more concerned about putting the brakes on too quickly.

GEITHNER: That would cause more damage to the productive
capacity of this economy and would risk larger deficits in the future.
Again, the big mistake governments make in financial crises is to sit
back, hope it's going to work itself out, put the brakes on too
quickly, not act aggressively enough, and we can't afford to make that
mistake.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Announcement coming tomorrow on autos. And I
have a question that my friend George Will gave for you, and he said
why is Chrysler too big to fail but Studebaker wasn't?

GEITHNER: George, I'm not going to get ahead of the president's
announcement tomorrow, but it's important to know that we want to have
a strong automobile industry. We want it to emerge from this period
of challenge stronger. That's going to require a lot of
restructuring. We're prepared as a government to help that process if
we believe it's going to provide the basis for a stronger industry in
the future that's not going to rely on government support.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But is Chrysler really too big to fail?

GEITHNER: George, I'm not going to get ahead of the president's
-- as I said, it's very important for our country that we have a
strong automobile industry going forward.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We're just about out of time, but you -- there
was a real sign that you had made it in the Washington culture just a
couple of weeks ago, parodied on Saturday Night Live just two weeks
ago. Here's what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(UNKNOWN): This $420 billion will be placed in a special fund
and will go to the first individual who comes up with a workable plan
to solve the banking crisis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what did you think when you saw that?

GEITHNER: I didn't see it, but my kids saw it. They thought it
was pretty funny. But you know, one of the great things in this job
is people have a lot of ideas. We get ideas all the time.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Even from Saturday Night Live?

GEITHNER: Well, not from Saturday Night Live, but we get it --
from people who are smart, thoughtful, credible, have been part of
solving these crises in other countries, and we listen to everybody.
We have got no pride of authorship in ideas, and we're going to do --
the only test that matters to us, is, is it going to work? Is it
going to get credit flowing again at acceptable risk, least cost to
the taxpayer?

STEPHANOPOULOS: And what's the most important single thing
you've learned over the last three months?

GEITHNER: That to get through this, governments need to act.
Great obligation responsibility for governments to act to solve these
things. The market will not solve this, and the great risk for us is
we do too little, not that we do too much.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Secretary Geithner, thanks very much for your
time this morning.

GEITHNER: Thank you, George.