Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


DISHING ON GEITHNER….Andrew Ross Sorkin punctures the Tim Geithner bubble today, asking if he’s really the financial star he’s been portrayed as:

Perhaps what has most people on Wall Street stirring is Mr. Geithner’s role in the fall of Lehman. At the time of its bankruptcy, he, along with Mr. Paulson, appeared to be the most vocal in supporting the government’s refusal to bail out the firm, according to people involved in various meetings. With hindsight, many in the financial industry blame a deepening of the global financial crisis on the government’s decision to let Lehman crumble.

Bloomberg tries to restore some of his luster:

Timothy Geithner was among the first policy makers to shine a light on the unregulated $47 trillion credit-default swap market back in 2005. The New York Federal Reserve president has struggled since then to get dealers to carry out reforms.

….”In classic Tim and New York Fed style, the work has been done behind the scenes, among technocrats, largely by consensus,” said Adam Posen, a former Fed official who is now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “The downside is that it takes awhile to get consensus.”

Of course, the problem here is that virtually everyone who’s qualified to deal with the financial meltdown had at least some role in it while it was happening. And given the speed and ferocity of the meltdown, there probably isn’t a person in the country who got every call right during the past year, including Geithner. (And that rather pointedly goes for the kibitzers, too, none of whom got every call right either.)

Anyway, Geithner seems like a pretty good pick, but it never hurts to remember that these guys are human. I don’t think Obama could have done much better, but that doesn’t mean the guy is a superman.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate