What Did Obama Tell Geithner about S&P?

The former Treasury secretary’s famous call came five minutes after a meeting in the Oval Office.

James Freeman
The Wall Street Journal
2/25/2014

Last month we wrote about the threatening phone call from then-Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner to the head of the parent company of Standard & Poor’s after S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating in 2011. Now we learn that Mr. Geithner placed the call to McGraw Hill Chairman and CEO Harold McGraw III just five minutes after leaving an Oval Office meeting with President Barack Obama.

This detail, drawing on information contained in Mr. Geithner’s public schedule, was included late yesterday in a filing by S&P in federal court in the Central District of California. The Department of Justice is suing S&P for $5 billion for alleged fraud in S&P’s ratings on mortgage-backed securities during the housing boom. But DOJ is not suing the other credit rating agencies that issued similarly awful ratings. Since only Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S., S&P says it is suffering from retaliation…

 

 

The article continues at The Wall Street Journal.

 

 

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