Geithner: Goldman Woulda Failed Sans Bailout

Goldman Sachs fatcats were musing this week about how they might have been fine without a federal bailout, but Tim Geithner is having none of it: “None of them would have survived,” he tells Bloomberg, without federal intervention. “The entire US financial system and all the major firms in the country, and even small banks across the country, were at that moment at the middle of a classic run, a classic bank run.”

Also from the Al Hunt interview:

• On financial reform: “It is very important that we change the way these executives are paid, the form of compensation, this year. We have to end that era of irresponsibly high bonuses. ... The basic problem we face across the system is that executives were paid for taking imprudent risks,”
• On TARP repayments: “We now estimate that we’re probably going to have $175 billion in repayments from the banking system by the end of next year."

(More TARP stories.)