Standard & Poor’s said that President Barack Obama met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in 2011 just before Geithner warned the company to expect a response to its downgrade of U.S. debt, an event that justifies its request to see White House communications to help defend fraud claims, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The timing of Obama’s conference with Geithner may support S&P’s claim that the Justice Department’s fraud lawsuit against it last year was retaliation, the company said yesterday in a filing in federal court. The government is seeking as much as $5 billion in civil penalties for losses to federally insured banks and credit unions who relied on S&P’s claims that its ratings of residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralized-debt obligation before the collapse of the housing market were free of conflicts of interest.
