Geithner's Disappointing Plan & Testimony

Watching Tax Cheat Tim Geithner testify before Congress yesterday was a supreme disappointment.

Can this guy be the same one as the one about whom I wrote in this post? The one Paul Volcker swore is the only guy in the country who can function as Treasury Secretary?

Larry Kudlow was right. Geithner took months to come up with....what? A modified version of Bill Seidman's 'bad bank' RTC of twenty years ago?

Surely, for all the fuss made over Geithner's brilliance, we are right to have expected much, much more from him.

As I have felt all along, Geithner seems to be just an operator, rather than a Treasury Secretary with foresight and vision. Not that Hank Paulson was so much better during the crisis of last year. But he did at least articulate a revamping of financial regulatory authorities that made some sense.

In a measure of how disappointed investors were in Geithner's so-called "plan," the S&P500 plunged nearly 43 points, or almost 5%.

Nice job, Tim.

Of course, the $64,000 question- or, in the age of Wonderboy, is that now the $64B question- is how and at what price impaired assets will be sold into the public-private trust? Geithner hasn't answered that.

Neither did he provide any estimate of the total cost of his new plan, when asked by a GOP Senator. He sort of punted, admitting it was important to know the total cost to taxpayers, but also admitting he had no idea.

This is change we want, eh?

I don't think so. I think we're in serious trouble, getting deeper as Wonderboy's Tax Cheat continues to be overwhelmed by his job at Treasury.