Geithner disputes Romney’s statistics

Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledged that women had been more affected by
the economic crisis than men, he said that it was a ridiculous way to look at the problem. Photo: CBS.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took to the media on Sunday to reject former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney‘s recent remarks that 92.3 percent of all jobs which were lost during President Barack Obama‘s presidency were held by women. However, data published by the Department of Labor confirm the Romney camp’s claim.

Although the Obama administration cannot refute the figure, Mr. Geithner told ABC News’ This Week that the statistic only told part of the story, adding that it was “a ridiculous way to look at the problem”. He said he believed that it was necessary “to look at the whole duration of the recession”.

“The recession started in 2008, early in that year,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “It was a year in the making before President Obama came into office. And it was very damaging to everybody, to families, men and women across the country,” he added.

The treasury secretary said that, under George W. Bush‘s administration, men were most affected at the onset of the crisis since the manufacturing and construction sectors were particularly badly hit at the time. Women only started losing jobs under the Obama administration when the recession spread throughout the economy and led to cut in local governments and education.

Mitt Romney‘s spokeswoman Andrea Saul accused the Obama camp of attempting to conceal what Mr. Obama’s policies had done to female American workers. “No amount of spin by the Obama campaign can hide the enormous damage this president has done to American women. If they move the starting point to the beginning of the so-called recovery, they will find women have benefited from less than one-eighth of the meager job creation” during Mr. Obama‘s three-year presidency. “The president should stop making excuses for his failures — he is entitled to his own spin but not his own facts,” she wrote in an email.

Various polls have for a while shown that Mr. Obama is attracting more female voters than his expected Republican opponent. Mr. Obama claimed during a White House Forum on Women and the Economy last week that women would be better off under the Democrats than under a Republican president. He particularly emphasized his efforts to increase women’s access to healthcare as well as improve their career opportunities, since they represent “over half this country and its workforce”.

Mr. Geithner also stated that although “the economy was getting stronger”, the recovery had “a ways to go still”. However, recent job data appear to suggest that the economy has either stalled or is deteriorating despite the massive money printing operations the Federal Reserve decided to embark on.