It is the job of a writer to make any subject interesting.  In the case of Timothy Geithner, that’s nearly impossible.  Never-the-less, the Dow jumped almost five-hundred points after word of his designation as Treasury Secretary.  His name has been closely associated with the Lehman Brothers’ failure and the AIG bailout.  So, how well do you know the man who will have his hand in your pocket for the next four years?

Working as a Treasury Department official in the nineties, he has direct ties to the Community Reinvestment Act.  Enacted in 1974 by President Ford, the original CRA states that no bank can discriminate against borrowers because of religion, marital status or apparently the ability to pay back the loan. The CRA was only moderately enforced until The Clinton Administration made some stringent alterations in 1994.  Many in Washington blame the CRA for the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and in response, the Dow tanking.  Democrats, lacking a coherent argument, shot back with the ever-popular, “Republicans are racist”.  This seems to have sufficiently deterred our Legislative branch away from legislating for a while.  The news comes just in time as they were dangerously close to doing something constructive for the American people.  

Geithner has drawn criticism more recently for bailing out Citicorp for whom Robert Rubin, his former boss under the Clinton administration, is an executive.  This just prior to letting Lehman Brothers disintegrate.   Still, as a member of G30, he is considered a world-class economic genius.  With a growing Chinese economy, his understanding of the Asian markets and culture may be exactly what the country needs.  So has Timothy Geithner earned the right to control your money?  You tell me.