House Oversight Committee Will Hold Hearing On Geithner/NY Fed/AIG Scandal


By David Dayen
firedoglake
January 8, 2010


Ed Towns, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, just announced that he would hold hearings into the emails that show how the New York Federal Reserve delayed disclosure of AIG counter-party payments, hiding public information from federal regulators. The statement is below.

Towns wants to hold the hearing the week of January 18, and has invited Treasury Secretary Geithner to testify.

We’ll see if Geithner bothers to show up. Through spokesmen at Treasury, Geithner has maintained that at the time of the emails, he had recused himself from dealing with AIG issues (why was he still heading the NY Fed then, if he couldn’t work on one of their most important issues in their history?). The White House parroted this line today.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called on Geithner to testify on whether or not Federal Reserve officials improperly pressured AIG to not disclose how taxpayer bailout funds were used in 2008.

Asked if the Treasury secretary should comply, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said “Secretary Geithner was not involved in these decisions.â€