http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103…

What Geithner Got Right
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 19, 2009

Well, the evidence of the past eight months suggests that Geithner was mostly right and his critics were mostly wrong. The financial sector is in much better shape than it was then. TARP money is being repaid, and the debate now is what to do with the billions that were never needed. It now seems clear that nationalization would have been an unnecessary mistake — potentially expensive and dangerously disruptive.

The course of events has vindicated the administration’s handling of its first big challenge. Obama could have flinched when the torrent of criticism was at its peak. But the president’s support for Geithner never wavered. Geithner never lost confidence in his policy. Rahm Emanuel mobilized to improve the presentation of the policy. The political team worked hard to deflect criticism from Geithner onto themselves.

In retrospect, their performance during this trial was impressive.

If you wanted to step back and define Geithner’s philosophy, you’d probably say that he starts with a set of fairly conservative instincts about the role of government, which put him on the centrist edge of the Democratic Party.

Some administrations are staffed by hedgehogs, who are guided by a few core principles. But this one is staffed by foxes, who respond flexibly to situations. In the administration’s first big test, that sort of pragmatism paid off.

Well, in addition to whining, you did ask a question — but I answered it already, if you had chosen to read: Volcker. I'd even take a risk on Warren, maybe, if I were confident she'd seek better goals like transparency and ethical reform rather than extremist Naderite stuff as was advocated earlier today.

Warren carries yucky lefty political baggage with her, and would politicize the job, but so have many Obama team members, anyway, in their jobs,

ROTFLMAO…

You do understand that being Secretary of the Treasury is a political job, it cannot be politicized any more than it already is…

WHO would you put in place MR. got-a-handle-on-it-all……………WHO would serve your interests?

For myself, and so many others, Warren is a Goddess who should be promoted to overseer the entire debacle but this time with more power to represent us………….US, being the middle and lower classes of this rapidly deteriorating wonderful country.

Agreed wholeheartedly. In addition to everything else, he has on his record breaking the back of inflation and helping dig us out of the earlier deep recession. (As a bonus, he hopefully would be at the forefront of resisting any impulse the lefties might have to use inflation as their next political-economic and vote-buying tool.)

Warren carries yucky lefty political baggage with her, and would politicize the job, but so have many Obama team members, anyway, in their jobs, and Warren has won points from the rest of us anyway in cutting through Geithner's and Treasury's BS in the past, such as with TARP money use and antics at places like General Motors and Chrysler.