Geithner's Emails, Phone Logs Subpoenaed

On Jan. 13 the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Edolphus Towns, ordered the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to provide Timothy Geithner's e-mails, phone logs, and meeting notes with regard to American International Group, Inc. (AIG), the reinsurance giant, whose bail-out is central to President Barack Obama's deathcare bill now before the Congress.

The subpoena demands by Jan. 19 all documents related to the New York Fed decision to fully reimburse banks that bought credit default swaps from AIG and efforts to persuade AIG to keep information about the payments from the public. In a statement today Towns said: "We need to understand why and how taxpayer dollars were used to bail out the same people who helped cause the financial crisis in the first place." The subpoena also called for documents from New York Fed General Counsel Thomas Baxter, Stephen Friedman, former New York Fed director and current Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director, and Sarah Dahlgren, a New York Fed senior vice president who manages its AIG oversight team. Towns also demanded term sheets related to payments to AIG's credit-default swap counterparties.

Geithner was also asked by the oversight committee last week to testify in public hearings about what he knew of the New York Fed's efforts to limit the disclosure.