In several different venues Friday morning, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended the administration's decision not to offer a full-fledged plan for the future of the housing market, insisting that Congress had only asked for an array of options.
Within minutes of the administration's
"Congress asked us to lay options, not to give them a final plan," Geithner said on CNBC. "We think it's important for the people in Congress that ultimately have to legislate to get more deeply in the relative merits of those choices and what we do in the report is to narrow those options."
In a conference call with reporters, Geithner largely repeated that line, arguing the administration had at least ruled out some options, including full privatization and nationalization.
"Congress asked us in Dodd-Frank to lay out options and a set of pros and cons for those options," Geithner said. "To be clear … we did rule out certain options. We are recommending a deeper exploration of the three options."
Speaking later at the Brookings Institute, Geithner said the administration is attempting to gain some general consensus on the direction of reform before laying out the details.
"We describe this as we'll drive them West and everyone wants to go West, so we know where we are going to go, but somewhere around Salt Lake City make a choice about what makes the ultimate options," he said during a question and answer session.
During the same discussion, Geithner acknowledged the administration—and the mortgage market—needed more time.
"Just realistically, we need a little bit of time," he said. "I mean again we're three years into the process of adjustment in the housing market. We probably have three more years left. And we're still pretty close to a deeply damaging financial panic. We spend a little more time with that uncertainty about the future to be reduced a little bit. I think those things require a little bit of time."
