WHEN: Today, Thursday, May 7th
WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box"
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC EXCLUSIVE interview with CNBC Senior Economics Reporter Steve Liesman and former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) this morning. Following are links to the interview on CNBC.com: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000377538, http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000377425 and http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000377539.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
GEITHNER ON LOST CONFIDENCE
There's been a tremendous loss of confidence in public institutions and in government. I think Americans still have a, again with even the broad improvement in the economy, they still have lost a lot of faith in the capacity of government to do things, to make a meaningful difference in their lives. I think that's going to have – the crisis, partly the crisis and partly the challenges that existed before the crisis, and that's going to be with us for a long time and it's going to take a long time to grow out of that.
GEITHNER ON CURRENT SYSTEM
This system is a much more resilient much stronger, much more stable system today than it was in the decade before the crisis. Absolutely. And significantly because these reforms put a huge amount more capital into the system, put in place much tougher rules in risk taking and those are applied much more broadly across the financial system. They have the prospect, they're strong enough to have the prospect if they're not eroded to buy this country a relatively long period of financial stability.
GEITHNER ON A SLOWER FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Across the American economy, across the financial system, I think there's no evidence to support the proposition that the economy is slower today because the system has more capital. And in fact I think you could say the opposite. The reason why we designed the stress test and the strategy we did to bring a bunch more capital into the financial system quickly was so that the financial system could provide the oxygen, a growing recovering economy needed to help businesses expand, invest and hire people back into the work force.
GEITHNER ON U.S. ECONOMY
I think the American economy if you look beneath the surface is a much more resilient economy now and it's doing really relatively well. I think in many ways it's a stronger economy than it was before the crisis. And again, compared to any of the major economies around the world today, the U.S. is doing better. And again, I think our performance in many ways is the envy of many countries.
GEITHNER ON ECONOMY
People thought that we were going to have a great depression. People thought we might have hyperinflation. People thought we might turn into Greece and the American economy is doing relatively well. Making steady progress, still a very tough economy for lots of people. But if you look at the rest of the world, look at how countries view us. They view what we did with a huge amount of admiration and I think even with all of our challenges, we're a lucky country.
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