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15 de setembro de 2009President Barack Obama will use this week’s anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse to pledge to drive through financial reforms in the face of criticism from banks, regulators and Congress.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, said a lack of legal authority to support the banking system at the height of the crisis a year ago was a “tragic failure of the US government”.
Mr Obama and Mr Geithner are attempting to use the spectre of Lehman, which filed for bankruptcy protection on September 15 last year, to convince lawmakers to pass their plans.
Mr Geithner said the reticence of Congress last year to give the administration of George W. Bush the power to invest taxpayers’ money was a failure, though he noted it was “naturally . . . offensive to throw public money” at banks.
Eventually, the gravity of the crisis convinced lawmakers to grant the administration $700bn of taxpayers’ money for the troubled asset relief programme, which has been deployed to shore up bank capital.
Now proponents of reform, which include Barney Frank, chairman of the House financial services committee, as well as the administration, are facing an uphill battle to pass every aspect of the proposed legislation, with regulators lobbying to protect their turf and the industry attacking plans for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Asked if changes had been made to prevent the fall of one institution polluting the system as Lehman did, Mr Geithner said: “Things are not yet in place – not yet. We do not have a new international capital accord and stronger resolution authority in place yet.”
“But what you have to understand is that this [crisis] was not just about Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns – it was about the world getting overleveraged,” said Mr Geithner, who last year was fighting the crisis as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York alongside Hank Paulson, his predecessor as Treasury secretary.
Mr Geithner insisted Lehman could not have been saved without legal powers and a buyer. After suggestions that the UK stood in the way of Barclays buying its failing US counterpart, he did not fault Britain’s position.
“I did not find the position of the UK government to be unreasonable. The UK banking system is five times GDP, and it was a very fragile time, so it was completely reasonable that the UK government would want to look closely at something like that.”
Next week the stage for regulatory reform moves to Pittsburgh where leaders of the G20 countries will discuss a US-led push for simpler, stronger rules on bank capital and a French-led effort to rein in bankers’ bonuses.
