Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer made an appearance on The Ed Show Friday. Spitzer weighed in on the scandal surrounding emails from the New York Fed to AIG, telling the bailed insurer to stay quiet about overpaying Wall Street firms with taxpayer money. The emails were sent when current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was in charge of the agency.
Headlines about the emails have put the White House on defense. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defended Geithner Friday, saying that the Treasury secretary was "not involved in any of these emails" and that "these decisions did not raise to his level at the Fed."
Spitzer told Ed that he was skeptical of Gibbs' certainty regarding Geithner's role because the emails have not been released. Neither the House, nor the Senate banking committees have subpoenaed AIG for the messages. Both, according to Spitzer, should be demanding all the emails from AIG, a company that is now majority-owned (77.9 percent) by the U.S. government and in turn, the American people.
Spitzer explained why it's so important for the emails to be released:
"What many of us have been saying for quite some time right now is that AIG is the center of the web of the entire economic cataclysm on Wall Street and the only way to understand what happened is to go through those emails. The amazing thing Ed, is we own the company. Taxpayers own the company. it is our right to understand what is being done with our money, what happened, what led to this cataclysm and only from that will we understand what did Tim Geithner do. The New York Fed was instrumental in creating the structure that failed. Tim Geithner was the president of the fed. You go back to who chose him to be there it was the head of the leaders of the New York investment banks that have benefited from the bailout.... Let's not jump to conclusions. But I can tell you... one thing with absolute certainty. Until we get every one of those emails. We Will not know..."
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