Business

Geithner’s ‘Stress Test’ will offer inside look at Lehman collapse

Just in time for the summer beach-reading season, former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s “Stress Test” offers his own tick-tock of the tumultuous days and months following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008.

There is nothing illegal about making money off the financial crisis, be it through a plum Wall Street job, six-figure speaking engagements, writing a book — even doing all three.

Alan Greenspan, Hank Paulson, Larry Summers and Peter Orszag have all cashed in on the catastrophe in one way or another. With former Fed Chief Ben Bernanke’s book due out in 2015, it’s little wonder Geithner wanted to get in on the legacy-protection business.

But almost six years out from Lehman, it’s a little unseemly that the men who often failed on the front lines of the financial system are still trying to get in the last word.

What will be more telling is how Geithner frames his six years at the New York Fed from 2003 to 2009, with an office right in Wall Street’s own backyard.

In that position, Geithner was in constant contact with the banks he was supposed to supervise. Yet the New York Fed under his watch has consistently been described as derelict in regulating and policing almost every big Wall Street bank, from survivors Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to colossal failures Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

This environment, with its lack of oversight, is where the seeds of destruction were planted years before the fall of 2008.

How will Geithner address his role in all this? A major mea culpa isn’t likely to be in the cards.

Then there is Geithner’s role in the rescue of AIG one day after the Lehman collapse. Was this, as many astute observers believe, a back-door bailout of Goldman Sachs? Were Geithner to admit that, the book could be a real page-turner. But don’t count on it.

“Stress Test” will be about the 10th book on the subject from government officials who witnessed the storm. So far, not a one has admitted that he made major mistakes.