As those who read me with any regularity will know I often season my postings with Star Trek references and today is no different. For those not familiar with the term, Ensign Ricky is a reference that goes back to the original Star Trek series from the 1960’s.

We would regularly see scenes where 4 of the main characters beamed down to a hostile planet accompanied by one guy in a red shirt (also known as the red shirt guy). Everyone knew going in that red shirt guy (Ensign Ricky) was dead meat and sure enough he’d be gone by the first commercial, usually in a particularly unpleasant way.

As the current administration moves from one public relations blowup to another (the most recent being the AIG payout story) there is already speculation that as time goes on somebody will have to be thrown under the bus in order to satisfy the growing public outrage. The speculation has reached the point that on the web site Intrade there is already discussion of whether or not Treasury Secretary Geithner will be gone by the end of June.

At this point the contract price is fairly low (15%) but that number has been growing and some expect it to increase rapidly in the coming weeks. To be fair Geithner brought a lot of this on himself when he started his tenure at Treasury with a tax scandal and since then he has continued to lurch from mess to mess, including the latest mess with AIG where he was somehow unaware of the planned payouts even though it was right in the paperwork he reviewed.

I’m not saying Geithner is doomed, but it is increasingly likely that if the administration reaches a point that they need to toss someone out that he is the prime candidate for beaming down with Kirk and company.