Lehman laments: Geithner had misgivings about not rescuing Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and felt then Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke were letting politics cloud their thinking. “And that was probably a little surprising to the president.” 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: The Citigroup clique) 
 
 Too big to fail is alive: When Geithner was still at Treasury, he toed the line on the administration’s position that the 2010 Dodd-Frank law would, without a doubt, put an end to bailouts and the problem of “too big to fail” banks. (“I sensed their advisers pulling them toward political expedience,” he writes, “trying to distance them from the unpalatable moves we had made and the even less palatable moves I thought we’d have to make soon.”) 
 
 Geithner also discloses that some members of the administration talked openly about nationalizing some banks like Citigroup. Over lunch at Café Centro, near Grand Central Terminal, he told me a story from a few months earlier: “I was crossing Lexington Avenue and some guy said, ‘You’re one of the Goldman [expletive] who ruined the country.’ ” Geithner said he replied, “Thanks for sharing.” At another point, he cheerfully relayed a story that also appears in his book about the time he sought advice from Bill Clinton on how to pursue a more populist strategy: “You could take Lloyd Blankfein into a dark alley,” Clinton said, “and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about two days. When his name was floated for the Treasury job in the fall of 2008, he was busy helping stave off, as the president of the New York Fed, the collapse of Citigroup. Emanuel wanted to know whether Geithner would accept either the Treasury job or a job as the director of the National Economic Council, a less-prestigious post, if one of them were offered to him. Geithner looked over the talking points, which were meant to express outrage, and decided he was simply not going to make them. “Then the blood lust would rise again.” 
 
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 That and other revelations about Geithner’s government tenure as head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and then treasury secretary are contained in a New York Times Magazine article published on Thursday in advance of Monday’s release of Geithner’s book “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.” 
 
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 Among the other revelations in the article: He doesn’t think the problem of “too big to fail” has been solved; he was at odds with former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke over the collapse of Lehman Brothers; and he floated Hillary Clinton as a candidate to succeed him before he left Treasury in January 2013. During his lecture to Summers’s class, one student asked a question about “resolution authority,” a provision of the reform laws that is supposed to let the government wind down a complex financial institution without creating a domino effect. Asked whether “too big to fail” still exists, he replied, “Yeah, of course it does,” describing attempts to end too big to fail as a “Moby Dick” for economists or regulators. “It’s not just quixotic, it’s misguided.” 
 
 He questioned whether policymakers could ever develop a system that allows them to be indifferent to the failure of an institution. Later, he writes: “These disagreements did not turn out to be consequential. Hank and Ben would have the courage to change course and do what needed to be done.” 
 
 When I ran the earlier passage by Paulson, he paused for a moment. But then of course we ran out of options.” 
 
 In January 2013, Geithner was finally “liberated.” He had been pressing Obama to let him step down since 2010, suggesting replacements like Erskine Bowles and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The president was so determined to have Geithner stay on longer that at one White House event, he took Geithner’s wife aside to try to enlist her help. “I knew it was kind of a hopeless cause — that if he needed to stay, he needed to stay — but I was not easily convinced,” Carole Geithner told the Times.
– The New York Times magazine has a lengthy profile of Tim Geithner ahead of Monday's release of the former Treasury chief's new book, and one bit in particular involving Bill Clinton is getting a lot of attention. Geithner had asked Clinton's advice on appeasing populist anger in dealing with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs: “You could take Lloyd Blankfein into a dark alley and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about two days," said Clinton. "Then the blood lust would rise again.” The Washington Post thinks that's interesting in the context of the 2016 election, considering that it could pit Hillary Clinton, seen as a safe choice by Wall Street, against the more populist Elizabeth Warren. Some other highlights, as spotted by Politico: Trying to leave: Geithner says he began pushing President Obama to let him step down in 2010, suggesting Hillary Clinton as his replacement. Obama resisted, however, even lobbying Geithner's wife, Carole. "I knew it was kind of a hopeless cause—that if he needed to stay, he needed to stay—but I was not easily convinced,” she tells the Times. “And that was probably a little surprising to the president.” Too big to fail: As Treasury chief, Geithner went along with the administration's reforms to end the concept of too-big-to-fail banks, but now he's got a different take. During a lecture, when asked about whether the principle still exists, he answered, “Yeah, of course it does.” Ending too-big-to-fail was “like Moby-Dick for economists or regulators. It’s not just quixotic, it’s misguided.”