likely to be delayed. people like secretary geithner have put a lot of energy in to the issues, related to the fiscal cliff. they are going to want to see it through. the same is likely through of defense secretary leon panetta who pleaded with congress to find solution to automatic cuts that could be de stating to the pentagon. today, a pentagon spokesman shot down talk of his departure. secretary panetta is focused squarely on his job today. focused on the mission of department of defense and not focused on his personal futur future. steven hess who served in numerous white house administrations said after four years most cabinet members would like to go to their kid s soccer games and return to private sector where lucrative offers are usually waiting. bret: more on this with the panel. thanks. former democratic party chairman says he is preparing another run at the governor s office in virginia.
for these sanctions, overwhelming bipartisan support, that the administration got on board. they were silent why? why did they take so long? if you look at the letters sent out to capitol hill from secretary geithner, jim steinberg, secothat sanctions w have a devastating on the u.s. economy, global economy, that the sanctions would undermine their diplomatic efforts. the timing of the sanctions. you all would have done it much earlier? if you look at the sanctions now, the news over the past couple weeks, iranian currency has crashed by about half. why do we wait for 2012 on that? why didn t we do it in 2010? political pressure. domestic political pressure that we could have supported, put pressure on the iranian regime, 2009. once-in-a-generation opportunity where you had a genuine bona fide uprising in iran. the president was silent. the potential to get regional allies to work, to isolate iran like and our allies in the gulf.
problem we had is that there was too much oversite in regulation of wall street? gretchen: now that we re hearing that two more firms may be designated as too big to fail s more government regulation really the way to prevent another crisis? our political panel is back, erin task, sheila bair and fred malic. all right. i want to start with sheila again only because you were part of writing dodd frank with the treasury secretary, tim geithner. what did you argue for and what did he want? we argued for a ban on bailouts and we were successful and we did have a disagreement with secretary geithner on this. their original white paper they put forward did allow for flexibility on bailouts and i think that s one of the reasons dodd frank ended up with this change. the designation process that i assume governor romney was referring to, it s a penalty box. it s not a too big to fail mandate. it says we think you re risky, we think you re dangerous, we re going to put higher capital require
changes, until those entering the program in 2023. that s a fact. well, that s his proposal. that s correct. that s what he s proposing. i m just saying that if you poll seniors, who do they trust on medicare? the answer comes back democrats and it does not come back republicans. again, let s have this discussion about medicare. i think it s wonderful that we re doing it. i think the president has a sound position and i think every day that we re not talking about the economy is a good day for the president. heather: brad, what do you think? does that benefit ryan if he can move forward on the campaign trail and get the messaging fixed and change those polls with seniors? sure. i moon, seniors are no different than any other american. of course they re concerned about health care, but they have to believe that barak obama is robbing peter to pay paul. the $700 billion he s taking out of medicare, incidentally, medicare is going bust. even secretary geithner acknowledges there is
simple as getting the banks to account how they used their t.a.r.p. funds, the response we got was tremendous. really, it was treasury officials repeating what they had heard from the banks that they dealt with on wall street telling us that it was impossible say if we insitsed on this, we could destroy the banking system and t.a.r.p. by the end of 2009, when is i confronted secretary geithner with this and the damage that was occurring by this lack of transparency rather than agree with me, he sort of exploded in this explaguetive laced tirade that i dare to suggest that he was not being transparent enough with the american people. all along it was pushback and the words the commitments of transparent sit were empty words. if the obama administration was so so lis tus of wall street and basically gave them everything ta they wanted and actually fought to give them what they wanted, why is it that wall street seems so firmly behind romney in the presidential race? look, they re goi