Geithner Starting to Get Heat in Advance of Confirmation Hearings

The WSJ this morning all but gave Republics a cheat sheet today for their grilling of Timothy F. Geithner during his upcoming confirmation hearing for his nomination as secretary of the Treasury Department. The WSJ article (more op-ed than news, by the way) criticized Geithner for being part of the "ancien regime." "The overall goal [of the Obama administration" would be to present the package as a comprehensive approach rather than last year's incremental and shifting steps that critics said hampered efforts to combat the crisis," the Journal wrote. Of course, Geithner was an architect of the "incremental shifting steps."

Beyond the fact that the article looks more Murdochian than Wall Street Journal, it does little more than tar someone who was working under unique and trying conditions. The key question for Congress is what will Geithner do moving forward, not what did he do back in the fall.

Tags: credit-crisis, geithner

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Permalink Reply by JJ Hornblass on January 9, 2009 at 9:42am: Well, that didn't take long. Check out Geithner's reported plan for the bailout going forward.

According to the Washington Post, the essential elements of the revised bailout plan are expect to be uses of TARP funds to:

* Help homeowners avoid foreclosure;
* Unclog the credit markets by helping to finance loans to consumers, small businesses and municipalities;
* Take additional stakes in financial firms, but force companies receiving federal aid to submit to greater restrictions on executive compensation than were imposed by the Bush administration; and
* Establish a new bureau within the Treasury to manage TARP in an attempt to improve the program's operations and oversight.

Proposed date for Geithner's confirmation hearing: Jan. 15.; ▶ Reply to This