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.
