Obama: Geithner Is Staying
I don’t think anyone feels Tim Geithner is doing a good job at Treasury. I think it has to do with the inherently flawed economic policies he’s been tasked with pursuing, and the inept and overwhelmed administration he’s been tasked with serving, but whatever. Geithner himself is no real prize either.
But what’s interesting is that I think a lot of Obama’s sycophants would like to see him sacrifice Geithner for his own sake. Things are not going well for the Obama administration – support for his economic agenda is crumbling before a skeptical and angry public – and unless Obama scapegoats Geithner the buck is going to end up stopping in the Oval Office. Yet Obama seems unwilling to do that.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama stepped up his weeklong defense of much-criticized Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, saying he would not accept his resignation even if it was tendered.
It came ahead of a critical week for Geithner, who is expected to unveil his much-anticipated bank bailout plan and outline broad financial regulatory reforms to better police Wall Street within days.
Obama said in an interview with CBS television network’s “60 Minutes” program that if Geithner tried to quit, he would tell him, “Sorry buddy, you’ve still got the job.”
To some degree, you’ve got to admire Obama’s stick-to-it attitude. In the past he’s never been shy about making things easier for himself with some timely scapegoating. Rezko. Wright. Ayers. Obama’s never been shy about throwing his friends under the bus. But apparently he’s decided the cost of such a move in Geithner’s case would outweigh the pluses.
So apparently we’re all stuck with the status quo, for now. But what I’m wondering is when Obama’s going to realize that what he’s doing with the economy isn’t going to work. My guess is that he knows full well it won’t work, that the point wasn’t to fix the economy but to use hype over the economic downturn to justify a government power grab in the capital markets, and right now he’s just waiting for the economy to recover on its own despite his economic policies so that he can take credit for it with the help of his sycophants in the media.
