Timothy Geithner took over as Treasury Secretary in the middle of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. In four years, he helped design the largest government stimulus package in history, and contended with a weak recovery, millions of Americans losing their homes, obstinately high unemployment and complicated budget negotiations. To his fans, he is the figure most responsible for stabilizing the banking system and preventing a catastrophic economic collapse. To his critics, he was excessively generous to bankers and failed to change a system where some banks remained “too big to fail.” In a wide-ranging interview during his last days at Treasury, he kept returning to what has become one of his signature themes—the importance of putting “policy ahead of politics.” All too often, in his view, the best economic policies have enormous up-front political costs. We began by talking about the financial crisis of 2008.

LA: Your predecessor Hank Paulson in his book describes how at the height of the crisis he would have sleepless nights, worrying that a giant financial collapse was going to occur on his watch and that he would go down in history as the Herbert Hoover of the current era. Your colleagues all say you are remarkably calm, even in the middle of a crisis.

TG: Well I was very worried throughout that period of time. Starting in August of ’07 I had moments of deep, serious concern about the future. The hardest part for me was that period between when we knew we faced an existential threat of collapse but before we figured out what we were going to be able to do. Before we figured out the contours of our plan.

LA: Was that from Lehman onwards?

TG: I would say from the end of December of ’07, there was a great sense of foreboding, gathering storm, forces beyond our control. Even as early as back in August of ’07. But it dramatically worsened in the fall of ’08, of course.

LA: When you took office in January, we had had TARP, we had had all of those guarantees in place, and yet they still didn’t seem to be working. There was still a run on Citi, still a run on Bank of America.