Timothy Geithner, the former U.S. treasury secretary who helped shape the country's policy response in the period following the financial crisis of 2008-09, discussed the roots of the crisis in a talk at the Yale School of Management on October 1.
Geithner's lecture, titled "Fighting Financial Crises: The Cause and the Craft," was delivered under the auspices of the Arthur M. Okun Public Policy Lectures. It was open to the Yale community and shared via video conference with member schools in the Global Network for Advanced Management.
"My experience was that we came to the crisis, a pretty existential crisis, with deeply inadequate—not just authority and tools—but understanding of what it takes to recover," Geithner said. "We had no body of people around who thought about how you renationalize, how you recapitalize, how you do those core things, which is a pretty tragic mistake for a country like ours."
The lecture was the first in a three-part series that Geithner is delivering as part of the course Global Financial Crisis, a for-credit class open to students throughout Yale and co-taught with Yale SOM Deputy Dean Andrew Metrick, the Michael H. Jordan Professor of Finance and Management. Geithner will return to Yale SOM for lectures on November 19 and December 3, exploring the U.S. response to the 2008-09 crisis and the response to future crises.
