Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner secured a line of credit from JPMorgan Chase, one of the too-big-to-fail recipients of bailout cash.
Geithner is looking to buy in to a new $12 billion fund at Warburg Pincus, the private equity firm where he now works. He reportedly stands to make a 20-30% return on the investment. Although he is not required to disclose the size or purpose of the credit line, a source told Bloomberg that Geithner was among several staff members to borrow money to invest in the fund.
So JPMorgan Chase, one of the banks Geithner bailed out, is about to help Geithner make loads of money.
As Huffington Post’s HuffPost Hill newsletter put it: “It’s almost like the entire Wall Street bailout was just one elaborate scheme to help him pay for heated bathroom tiles.”
We have previously noted that Geithner’s post-Treasury career has closely followed the path taken his mentor, Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Both had a brief cooling-off period at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, before taking high-paying Wall Street jobs (optics be damned). For Rubin it was Citigroup. For Geither it is Warburg Pincus, one of the largest private equity firms in the country.
Follow Geithner’s path from regulator to Wall Streeter in this map (click through for a larger version):