Even largest banks would have failed without help: Geithner

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Friday that not even the largest banks could have survived without government intervention last year.

“The entire U.S. financial system and all the major firms in the country, and even small banks across the country, were at that moment at the middle of a classic run, a classic bank run,” Geithner said in an interview with Political Capital, Bloomberg reported.

Regarding the biggest banks, he said “none of them would have survived a situation in which we had let that fire try to burn itself out.”

Goldman spokesman Lucas Van Praag told Bloomberg the bank raised private sector money when the markets became “very difficult.”

“We didn’t know what was going to happen and were very glad as a result of government intervention we didn’t have to find out.”