Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spoke with Newsweek's Jon Meacham at the National Press Club yesterday.  While he said "things have clearly stabilized" with the economy, Geithner is not ready to say the economy has bottomed out.  And he told Meacham that he expects recovery to be slow and painful.  He also calrified his views on a few key issues: 

-The nature of this financial crisis: Geithner says, like all economic crises, we have gone from "excessive confidence" to excessive fear.  But this recession is much more damaging...as Americans haven't seen anything like it in two generations."  And he says the Obama Administration response is "the most aggressive approach to solving a financial crisis than we've seen from any serious country in a very long period of time."

-Derivatives: The new regulations the federal government placed on derivatives last week would "have helped" lessen the crisis, "but they would not have been decisive"

-Executive pay: Geithner says the government has no plans to cap pay, and he opposes such caps.  Instead, he supports setting compensation "standards" to minimize risks.  

Here is a segment of the interview from Bloomberg:

You can watch the full interview at the National Press Club's website.