Monday, March 23, 2009

Will Geithner get the ax?

Some of my readers hate these hard-core, sometimes political, sometimes financial stories. Sorry, please read it anyway.

In case you missed it, Timoty Geithner is the Secretary of Treasury and he's come under a bit of fire. Some people have called for his resignation or that he be fired. Some of the mis-steps include:

1) He spent his confirmation hearings explaining why he failed to pay some of his taxes (and of course he wants you to pay yours)
2) He muffed the rollout of his most important policy initiative, the bank rescue plan.
3) He failed to stop AIG from paying out $165 million in bonuses -- which reminded Congress and the public that he was one of the people who presided over the AIG deal in the first place.
(source here)

But President Obama has full faith in the Secretary. On his recent pop-culture appearance, the President said "He is a smart guy, and he's a calm and steady guy."

I also heard he went on to say "Timmy, you're doing a heck of a job." - No wait, that's what the former president said to one of his agency directors. And all of the liberals made fun of that. It will be interesting to see how this is remembered....

**** Corrected typo - thanks to my editor ****
**** Another minor correction ****

3 comments:

David said...

Actually, a lot of the liberal blogs want Geithner to step down too.

Randy said...

David, the issue I have is not whether or not Geithner should step down, it's the comment from the president. So many people laughed at President Bush's "Heck of a job, Brownie" comment: now President Obama is saying essentially the same thing.

Chuck said...

Obama is a liberal though, so he gets a pass on, well, everything.