ROME — This was no Roman holiday for Timothy Geithner.
But after crashing global markets with a botched rollout of a bank rescue plan, the new U.S. Treasury secretary earned better reviews from global finance officials meeting in the Eternal City.
Now comes the hard part — putting the plan into place.
Geithner had appeared stilted and tentative Tuesday in Washington when he read a speech outlining the new bank program. He was more assured Saturday in Rome at a news conference after two days of talks among finance officials of the Group of Seven major industrial countries.
“The world is facing enormous challenges. Governments around the world are acting with greater force and urgency to address these challenges,” he said.
The slight, boyish-looking 47-year- old is the public face of the Obama administration’s economic team as it confronts the financial crisis.
A central part of the government’s bailout plan is an effort to assemble up to $1 trillion in resources to purchase toxic assets and remove them from banks’ balance sheets. The plan so lacked specifics that financial markets tanked, sending the Dow Jones industrial average plunging by 382 points Tuesday.
Geithner’s explanations about the scant details were, by all accounts, not much better in the private meetings in Rome. But he had a better audience: finance ministers who are in the same fix he is in. They, too, are trying to figure a way to deal with billions of dollars in losses being carried on banks’ books without sending their governments’ balance sheets even further into the red.
For that reason, the finance officials were more willing to give Geithner and the Obama team time to develop a program that will attract public investment to be used to purchase those toxic assets.
Although it was his first G7 as Treasury secretary, he had spent years in his previous Treasury stint preparing others for such sessions. Many officials called him “Tim.”
“He participated actively in the debates on all points on the agenda,” said French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde. “We welcomed him warmly.”
