Mr. Geithner, Wall Street is on Line 1 (again)

updated 7:10 p.m. ET Oct. 8, 2009

WASHINGTON - As the federal government propped up the housing market and braced for the collapse of General Motors this spring, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner capped a busy week with phone conversations with three men.

The first was Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The second was Jamie Dimon, the CEO at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The third was President Barack Obama.

Dimon and Blankfein are members of an exclusive club: Along with executives at Citigroup Inc., they are among a cadre of Wall Street executives who have known Geithner for years, whose multibillion-dollar companies survived the economic crisis with his help, and who can pick up the phone and reach the nation’s most powerful economic official.

Geithner’s calendars, obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the extraordinary influence of three companies. More than any other company or any of their rival banks, Goldman, Citi and JPMorgan can get Geithner on the phone several times a day if necessary, giving them an unmatched opportunity to influence policy.

“They’re people he has relationships with and who he can trust,” said Taylor Griffin, a Treasury Department spokesman during the George W. Bush administration and an adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of John McCain. Griffin defended Geithner’s relationships with industry executives. “There’s only so much time in the day and you can only talk to so many people. You choose the people whose point of view you value.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with senior Treasury Department officials talking to industry executives, or even with the secretary keeping tabs on the market’s biggest players. But the calendars offered fodder for critics who say Geithner is too close to the Wall Street firms he helped bail out following the economic meltdown.

“It’s appropriate for Treasury officials to keep in touch with those who work in the markets every day, particularly when the economy and the markets are so fragile,” Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said.

Not all players in the market enjoy the same access. In the first seven months of Geithner’s tenure, his calendars reflect at least 80 contacts with Blankfein, Dimon, Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons or Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.

Geithner had more contacts with Citigroup than with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who leads the effort to approve Geithner’s overhaul of the financial system. Geithner’s contacts with Blankfein alone outnumber his contacts with Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Partly this is explained by the extraordinary clout of these companies. Goldman, JPMorgan and Citigroup are among the dominant Wall Street players. Their executives can move not just markets but entire economies. Treasury invested heavily in all of them to keep the industry afloat, and Citi faces tighter scrutiny because Treasury owns a larger stake in the bank.

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