WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the Obama administration will issue executive compensation rules for certain firms within weeks.
Geithner was speaking during a Bloomberg Television interview about regulating compensation at firms getting taxpayer aid following the Wall Street bailout. A transcript of the interview was released Friday.
Asked when compensation rules would be issued, Geithner said, “I would say within weeks.” He said the administration wants to build consensus on a set of broader standards that would affect compensation practices across the financial industry.
“Part of what produced this crisis was a set of compensation practices that encouraged, just to simplify it, excessive risk-taking,” Geithner said.
He added, “I think we’re going to need to see very, very substantial change in practice.”
In the interview Geithner was asked about the credit crisis and said that it has become easier to borrow money but that the cost of credit remains high.
