Geithner and David Axelrod, Obama’s Senior advisor, tell the following story:

“Axelrod was ‘livid’ when he found out that Geithner and [Larry] Summers ‘had quietly lobbied’ against an amendment to the stimulus that would have restricted the payment of bonuses at firms that received bailout funds. Those bonuses had become a huge political sore point for the administration, but the finance guys argued that retroactive steps to claw back the money would have violated existing contracts.

‘This would be the end of capitalism as we know it’ Geithner told Axelrod, to which Axelrod says he responded: ‘I hate to break the news, Mr. Secretary, but capitalism isn’t trading very high right now.'”

William K. Black writes:  Anyone that wants to save “capitalism” must destroy the current corrupt system “we know” that is posing as “capitalism.” To sum it up, there was no greater service that the Obama administration could have done for (real) capitalism than to produce “the end of capitalism as we know it.” Geithner was absolutely right in his diagnosis and absolutely wrong in his response. Wall Street hates “capitalism” – Geithner and Summers acted to save, rather than exorcize, its corrupt doppelgänger.

Geithner and Summers were so wedded to serving the interests of Wall Street – and crony capitalism – that they secretly sabotaged the efforts of progressives (supported in this unusual case by President Obama) to enact a legislative reform of compensation that was (1) legal, (2) economically efficient, (3) essential to restore “capitalism,” (4) essential to justice, and (5) politically popular. Obama discovered that he, and more importantly the American people, had been betrayed by Summers and Geithner – and did nothing. His administration died that day when he failed the most elemental test of leadership and integrity.   We are still struggling with the results.