Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"What is most disturbing ....is the unmitigated praise for the selection of Timothy Geithner. Geithner may do a fine job at Treasury, and we should all hope that he does, but let's not forget that he was in the middle of the policy team that gave us this economic mess. He was a top official in the design of the East Asian bailout that set us up on the over-valued dollar, bubble-driven growth course. He also thought that one-sided financial deregulation was just fine."

Also sprach Dean the undauntable Baker, the Ixion of pro-jobbler econ-con prog-blog tribunes.

Not exactly big-box, as econbloggers go, but he thumps the drum steadily, if not artfully, and I agree: what is it that is a Geithner?

Second generation establishment functionary; Dartmouth grad; Kissinger Ganymede; Rubin detail golem; protracted stymate to that mental pederast Arnold Ziffle, er, that is, Larry Summers, through innumerable Clinton-era crises in the imperial cockpit; Bushtime risk morass-maker, IMF hatchet-hurler -- on and on it goes.

Does this augur ill? I'd say so, if I thought this Romulan-eared hyper-cypher had the freedom of will worthy of an earthworm. But I suspect he don't. I see in him a guy in love with climbing marble stairs other folks built.

Look, gang, setting to one side Alexander the Great, Hank the crank Morganthau, and Albert Gallatin, the treasury post is not for guys on a personal mission. Looking over the former inmates, the job looks mostly like it's fit for Wall Street and Washington's B-listers: a bunch of classy pin-pushers, glorified Wall Street valets, and bygone deballed corporate bulls, easily replaced and even more easily bypassed.

Applicable POTUS pocket maxim: "Let 'em catch my flak. Make a gaffe, soak 'em in shame and neglect. Use 'em to misdirect the press. Et cetera."

That goes for peacock walkers, like secretaries of state, too, of course.