{"id":1622,"date":"2009-03-06T22:55:17","date_gmt":"2009-03-07T03:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/?p=1622"},"modified":"2012-09-30T11:27:18","modified_gmt":"2012-09-30T15:27:18","slug":"sydney-morning-herald-geithners-incompetent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/06\/sydney-morning-herald-geithners-incompetent\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Morning Herald: Geithner’s Incompetent"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote earlier<\/a> that I believe the Obama Administration’s wanton destruction of our economy was the result of simple inexperience or incompetence rather than malice. Tomorrow’s Sydney Morning Herald seems to support that conclusion<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When Barack Obama announced his champion to rescue the world from economic ruin, it was the first time most Americans had ever heard the name Tim Geithner.<\/p>\n

The initial impression was good. The stockmarket surged and the pundits swooned. “Exactly a decade ago, he was Uncle Sam’s golden-boy emissary sent into the stormy centre of what was then the world’s worst financial crisis [the Asian crisis],” reported The New York Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The paper gushed: “Just 36 at the time, he’d been raised in Asia and knew the culture so intimately he scored successes and won confidences that other diplomats couldn’t match. Geithner earned widespread plaudits for pulling together quarrelling Asian finance ministers into a $US200 billion rescue of their economies.”<\/p>\n

“A fantastic choice,” said a Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi analyst, Chris Rupkey, as the Dow rose by nearly 6 per cent. Even one of Obama’s political rivals, the hard-bitten Republican senator Richard Shelby, agreed Geithner was “up to the challenge”.<\/p>\n

If anyone in the US media had thought to ask a former Australian prime minister for his assessment, they would have heard a different view. And they would not have been so surprised at Geithner’s performance since.<\/p>\n

In a speech to a closed gathering at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner’s record in handling the Asian crisis: “Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis.”<\/p>\n

In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Go read the whole thing… and then ask yourself is Tim Geithner really the right man for the job? We were told he was “uniquely qualified” to lead the nation out of economic collapse, and that he should be confirmed despite his tax troubles because no other candidate could possibly replace him… Heh!<\/p>\n

So far all he’s done is fiddled while the stock market has crashed and unemployment has climbed to 8.1 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

H\/T: Ed Morrissey<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote earlier that I believe the Obama Administration’s wanton destruction of our economy was the result of simple inexperience or incompetence rather than malice. Tomorrow’s Sydney Morning Herald seems to support that conclusion: When Barack Obama announced his champion to rescue the world from economic ruin, it was the first time most Americans had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,7],"tags":[507,1363,506],"class_list":{"0":"post-1622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-economy","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-bank-bailout","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-tim-geithner","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfpI7-qa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1825,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/27\/what-caused-the-finacial-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":1622,"position":0},"title":"What Caused The Finacial Crisis?","author":"Jeff","date":"March 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot has been written about greed and mismanagement on Wall Street but that's only half the story... Make no mistake greed and mismanagement played their part but so did government intervention and regulatory policy and that's the largely untold story: Related Speaking of doom, what if Obama only makes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/economy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1631,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/08\/44-out-of-800\/","url_meta":{"origin":1622,"position":1},"title":"44 Out Of 800???","author":"Jeff","date":"March 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Chris Wallace tossed out an interesting factoid on Fox News Sunday this morning... Out of 800 cabinet positions that require Senate confirmation Barack Obama has only nominated 44 and of those only 28 have been confirmed. I'm hoping I heard that wrong it strikes me as being an absurdly low\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/economy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2285,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/01\/tim-geithner-is-a-laughingstock-in-china-too\/","url_meta":{"origin":1622,"position":2},"title":"Tim Geithner is a Laughingstock in China, Too","author":"Jeff","date":"June 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Ouch, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who has become pretty much a permanent punch line here is apparently a laughingstock in China too (emphasis mine): U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday reassured the Chinese government that its huge holdings of dollar assets are safe and reaffirmed his faith in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/economy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3011,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/19\/wsj-geithner-under-fire-amid-frustration-on-economy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1622,"position":3},"title":"WSJ: Geithner Under Fire Amid Frustration on Economy","author":"Jeff","date":"November 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Normally I'd say the calls for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's resignation were just hot air but given the recent disclosures about his role in AIG bailout while President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, I suspect this is more than just normal political blustering: Snowballing frustration about the economy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/economy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1800,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/25\/idiot-geithner-speaks-dollar-sinks\/","url_meta":{"origin":1622,"position":4},"title":"Idiot: Geithner Speaks, Dollar Sinks","author":"Jeff","date":"March 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In remarks before Council on Foreign Relations today Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the U.S. is open to an SDR linked currency... Geithner later clarified his remarks by saying that \"the dollar remains the world's dominant reserve currency\" and that that is likely to continue for some time, but the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/economy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3151,"url":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/07\/bloomberg-geithners-fed-told-aig-to-limit-swaps-disclosure\/","url_meta":{"origin":1622,"position":5},"title":"Bloomberg: Geithner’s Fed Told AIG to Limit Swaps Disclosure","author":"Jeff","date":"January 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In a sane world Tim Geithner's tax troubles would have kept him from being confirmed as Treasury Secretary. Unfortunately, we don't live sane and those tax troubles pale in comparison to what we're learning about the Geithner led Federal Reserve Bank of New York's role in the AIG bailout: The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Culture of Corruption"","block_context":{"text":"Culture of Corruption","link":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/category\/culture-of-corruption\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasetaro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}