Throw Timmy Under The Bus

Henry Blodget takes Timmy The Invisible Boy out back and applies a 2x4 to his forehead as Timmy comes clean to Nancy Pelosi in a letter.

The more troubling part of the letter, though, is Tim Geithner's description of his own approval of the bonuses. He says he registered "strong objections" and then asked for a written legal analysis of why the bonuses had to paid. This does not sound like the behavior a man who has the balls necessary to stand up to the many constituencies that want to roll right over him right now (which is the kind of man we need during this crisis). It sounds like the behavior of a man who is already thinking of how to defend a decision he knows is a bad one.

What Tim Geithner should have said, in our opinion, was "No."

We're also not encouraged by Geithner's defense of AIG CEO Liddy in the penultimate paragraph (people are being unjustifiably mean to him, apparently). Edward Liddy is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. By now, he should be able to look after himself.

Our concern about Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary during this crisis is that he's too close to Wall Street to make the kind of decisions that need to be made right now. This exchange bears that out.

In other words, yet another call for Geithner to go. I've been saying that Timmy was always too close to Wall Street to fix this problem from the beginning, but if he actually thinks he can weasel his way out of this and start defending Liddy on the AIG bonus thing, he's toast in every sense of the word.

It's looking very much like Obama's going to have to make a choice damn soon, and that's "Do I throw Timmy under the bus?"

I say Timmy's got to go. Granted, I've been saying that since, oh, November, but now may be the point where he gets the heave-ho.