Geithner Fight on Fiscal Cliff Invokes Dodd-Frank Resolve

When U.S. senators were picking apart the Obama administration’s plan for a stand-alone consumer-protection bureau during negotiations on the financial-rules overhaul, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner agreed to put it under the Federal Reserve to ensure that Republican lawmakers wouldn’t kill it.

Geithner calculated the bureau wouldn’t be affected and backing down would help get the 2010 legislation passed. His compromise illustrates the pragmatic approach Geithner embraced in pressing for Dodd-Frank during his four years at the Treasury and will need to draw on in one final test as the administration’s lead negotiator with Congress on the so-called fiscal cliff.