Geithner: Home Alone?

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On Monday, after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner finished briefing reporters on the administration’s new toxic assets plan, journalists filed out of the Treasury building–which conveniently and symbolically sits next to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue–and spotted something interesting in the lobby: a case that holds the photographs of the Treasury Department’s top officials. And the case looked rather empty.

Under Geithner is Stuart Levey, the under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. He’s a holdover from the Bush administration. Below him are Neel Kashkari, an interim assistant secretary in charge of the Office of Financial Stability, which has been overseeing various bailouts. He’s another Bush holdover. Next to him are Kennther Carfine and Janice Bradley Gardner, two other assistant secretaries appointed during the Bush years. Below them are Eric Thorson, the department’s inspector general. He, too, was named by President George W. Bush. And next to him is Neil Barofsky. He was tapped by Bush last November to be a special inspector general overseeing Treasury’s Wall Street bailout.

So it’s Geithner and a handful of Bush appointees. Sure, there are aides whom Geithner has brought into the department. He has a chief of staff who once was a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs. Gene Sperling, a top Clinton administration economic policy adviser (and well-known workaholic), is a counselor to Geithner. But a glance at the case does leave the unnerving impression that the guy who is supposed to save the economy is home alone.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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