Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner’s job is not getting any easier. Geithner has yet to have any of his seventeen deputies confirmed, and yesterday two expected nominees for Treasury positions withdrew themselves from consideration. The withdrawals seem to have been in part because of frustration with the elaborate vetting process that the Obama Administration has put in place, as well as concern over anticipated attacks from Congressional Republicans. But I have to wonder also whether the withdrawals, and the difficulty Obama is having filling these jobs, aren’t also the result of the endless and vituperative stream of attacks on Treasury in general and Geithner in particular, attacks that are coming from both the left and the right.Point there. The GOP is indeed trying to sabotage Timmy as much as they can so they can say Obama failed. Part of that is refusing to allow any deputies to be nominated at a time where Timmy is sailing the ship by himself. Would you want to work for Geithner right now?
On the other hand, the rest of Jim's thesis is pure bullshit:
Geithner has been Treasury Secretary for little more than a month, yet the calls for his resignation are already coming fast and furious. More important, the attacks on him don’t, for the most part, take the form of reasoned disagreement. Instead, they assume, and assert, that if, say, Geithner is against nationalizing the banks, he is either stupid or corrupt, when it seems more likely that he’s just reached a different conclusion about the risks and rewards of nationalization. (Henry Blodget’s call, today, for Geithner’s resignation ultimately boils down to saying that Geithner should go because he doesn’t agree with Blodget about the virtues of nationalization.) Treating disagreements over policy issues as prima facie evidence of evil intentions, or as a reason for firing, creates an environment for policymaking that’s toxic, and makes it harder to get good people to work in the public sector. And at a time when we need government more than ever, that’s just not a good thing.The reasons I'm calling for Timmy to go away is that we don't know what his conclusions about anything are. He keeps trying the same exact plan over and over again, which is attempt to magically remove all the bad debt from banks without sticking the taxpayer with it, and somehow allowing the banks and stockholders to keep all the good assets for themselves, and he can't do it. The reason he can't do it is because he's trying to do something impossible and he keeps wasting America's time trying to come up with new and exciting ways to give the banks all their money and fuck the taxpayer over, and he's hoping nobody will notice.
People then actually notice that whatever plan he pops out every couple of weeks looks suspiciously like allowing the banks to keep all their assets and the taxpayer getting stuck with mountains of toxic debt. Then they call him out on it. Then he says "We're working on it" and floats a new trial balloon that then manages to once again look suspiciously like allowing the banks to keep all their assets and the taxpayer getting stuck with mountains of toxic debt.
It's ludicrous. It's like a teenager coming up with plan after plan to convince Dad to let him borrow the Audi A8 to go to Vegas. It's not going to happen, but the teenager plugs along anyway, operating on the theory that if he just hits the right balance, he can get Dad to totally go along with it.
We don't have time for this bullshit. If Geithner can't come up with a better plan, then replace him with somebody who can. And the person who needs to ultimately make that call is Barack Obama.
Otherwise, yeah, it really will be the Obama Depression. Dig?
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