Timothy Geithner can probably be described by three words/phrases — smart, competent and out of touch? Eugene Robinson asks whether the Treasury secretary ultimately is up for the job:
Obama’s job would be much easier if Geithner were more effective at communicating with the public about what happened to the economy and what the administration is doing to fix it. As things stand, Obama has to do all the explaining himself. Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect Geithner to be both a financial whiz and a silver-tongued orator. He does speak the language of Wall Street, though, and one of the nonnegotiable requirements in his job description should be to make the men and women who run our financial institutions understand that their behavior has to change.
The basic strategy for handling the crisis, begun under the Bush administration and continued by Obama, is to hook up a fire hose to the Treasury and shower irresponsible and greedy financial institutions with money until the fire is put out. In political terms, to put it mildly, this is a hard sell. It becomes an impossible sell when Wall Street displays not gratitude but arrogance, reminding us how emotionally satisfying it would be — if ultimately counterproductive and even disastrous — to stand back and let the fire burn.
The vast amount of money poured into Wall Street has bought American
taxpayers the right to say that business-as-usual practices such as the AIG
bonuses are over. Geithner needs to deliver this message. If he can’t or won’t,
Obama should find somebody who can and will.
Hank Kalet 