Via the Wall Street Journal:
The revelation came from Timothy Geithner last Wednesday with PBS’s Charlie Rose, who asked the Treasury Secretary: “Looking back, what are the mistakes and what should you have done more of? Where were your instincts right, but you didn’t go far enough?”
Mr. Geithner: “We need a little more time to get full perspective.”
Mr. Rose: “Right.”
Mr. Geithner: “But I would say there were three types of broad errors of policy and policy both here and around the world. One was that monetary policy around the world was too loose too long. And that created this just huge boom in asset prices, money chasing risk. People trying to get a higher return. That was just overwhelmingly powerful.”
Mr. Rose: “It was too easy.”
Mr. Geithner: “It was too easy, yes. In some ways less so here in the United States, but it was true globally. Real interest rates were very low for a long period of time.”
Mr. Rose: “Now, that’s an observation. The mistake was that monetary policy was not by the Fed, was not . . .”
Mr. Geithner: “Globally is what matters.”
Mr. Rose: “By central bankers around the world.”
Mr. Geithner: “Remember as the Fed started — the Fed started tightening earlier, but our long rates in the United States started to come down — even were coming down even as the Fed was tightening over that period of time, and partly because monetary policy around the world was too loose, and that kind of overwhelmed the efforts of the Fed to initially tighten. Now, but you know, we all bear a responsibility for that. I’m not trying to put it on the world.”
In other words, after trying to blame the financial panic on bankers (who are not without responsibility), he now tries to pass the buck to other central banks. That being said, as the Journal notes:
Mr. Geithner’s concession is important nonetheless because before he moved to Treasury he was vice chairman of the Fed’s Open Market Committee that sets monetary policy. His comments mark a break with the steadfast refusal of Fed Chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to admit any responsibility. They prefer to blame bankers and what they call the “global savings glut,” as if the Fed had nothing to do with creating that glut.