Robert Scheer: Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves

What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion, interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week, in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, it wasn't an "interest-free" loan! Make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money, when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages, were being slapped with interest payments of more than 25 percent! One wonders if Barack Obama was fully aware of Geithner's deceitful performance at the New York Fed, when he appointed him treasury secretary in the incoming administration. The president was probably ignorant (as he always is), as were key members of Congress. "I wasn't aware of this program until now," said Barney Frank, D-Mass., who at the time chaired the House Financial Services Committee, admitting to Geithner's "single-tranche open-market operations" program, and there was no language in the Dodd-Frank law supposedly reining in the banks that compelled the Fed to reveal the existence of this program.