The Geithner Nomination

Overall, I have been fairly pleased with President Obama’s choices for his senior advisors…with a heavy stress on the word “fairly”.

Why stress “fairly” you ask?

Two words: Timothy Geithner.

If you have not been following the news lately, Mr. Geithner is the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is considered by many as a very sharp and qualified choice to run the Treasury Department.

Oh yeah, he also failed to file income taxes for his work with the International Monetary Fund from 2001-2004 and owed the Internal Revenue Service (an institution he will now be controlling) over $34,000.

By the way, he only reimbursed the IRS when he became nominated by President Obama.

Yes, you read that correctly, President Obama’s choice for Secretary of the Treasury, the person that runs the economy and is in charge of the IRS, did not pay income taxes for a stretch of four years.

Why would he fail to pay income taxes for four years you may ask?

Well, there are only two possible reasons: he is either stupid or a criminal.

Seriously, you would have to be one or the other in this situation.

To not know that you have to pay taxes on earned income is fairly unbelievable and even more so when you consider that this man is an economist.

The other choice is intentionally not paying the taxes, which would make him a criminal.

If I had to guess which one he is, I would say he is a criminal because I mind it virtually impossible that he did not know what he was doing was wrong and criminal.

Mr. Geithner has decided to use the stupidity excuse though. I guess he figures it’s easier to admit to stupidity than to committing a crime and he’s probably right.

Either way, I do not want him running the Treasury Department.

If he doesn’t have the common sense to know to pay taxes (a claim he has admitted to), how can he successfully steer any economy, much less one that’s mired in a recession? And if he is a criminal, well…do I even need to explain why that is a bad thing?

I didn’t think so either.

I must admit, this nomination really puzzles me.

Is there no one else that can run this economy? Are we that devoid of economic talent that we have to resort to a criminal or buffoon to head the Treasury Department?

Furthermore, for all of this talk from President Obama about greed killing our economy, he’s going to nominate a thief (and let’s face it folks, we all know that he is) to be Secretary of the Economy? I mean, isn’t stealing the epitome of greed?

But beyond puzzling, I also find this nomination troubling as well.

First, Mr. Geithner’s “genius” is up for a serious debate to say the least.

Obviously, the tax issue is a huge problem, but so is his performance running the New York Fed. He was one of the architects of the $700 billion bailout package (how’s that going by the way?) and his decision to let Lehman Bros. fail was a rather large mistake.

Secondly, the reasons that several senators gave for confirming him are rather troubling to me.

“It doesn’t mean to say that it doesn’t bother senators, but these are monumental challenges and I don’t think it would preclude his nomination at this point,” Sen. Olympia Snowe R-Maine.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said that in normal times he would oppose Geithner but "these are not normal times."

So, in other words, because we’re going through a recession, we’re just going to forget about things like standards and qualifications?

I really think that that sets a fairly dangerous precedent.

Can you imagine if President Bush had nominated someone like Geithner? The outcry from the media, democrats in the Senate and the Left would be over-the-top. They would have tore Geithner’s life apart and labeled him “stupid”, “dishonest”, “criminal” (all truthful statements, but statements that republicans would never make) and probably much worse.

But, as we all know, the rules just aren’t the same for republicans and democrats and this nomination proves that point.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John