Tag Archives: Timothy Geithner

I believe the look is one of incredulity

Or in other words, “Do I really have to take this person I’m talking to seriously?”

Observe Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (to whom my reaction has been tepid at best, but I’m warming up to him after this) listening to, and attempting to answer, a question posed to him today by Rep. Michele Bachmann, regrettably of Minnesota’s regrettable 6th District:

Pay particular attention at 1:14. That is precisely the moment where Secretary Geithner realizes he’s dealing with a crazy person. Priceless.

Soon the look of incredulity may become known simply as the Bachmann Effect.

Regrettably, I also bothered to visit Earth2Obama.org, the site that apparently posted this C-SPAN clip on YouTube (as evidenced by the omnipresence of their URL in the clip), and I have to guess from that site’s stance that they actually think Michele Bachmann is right in all of this. Sheesh. Where were all of these right wing constitutional literalists during the Bush presidency?

One last comment on the general matter of how this person got elected to Congress, and what that says about her district, the caption in the still from this clip says it all: MN-6 is a prime example of gerrymandering at its worst. There is no logical reason that Woodbury (an eastern suburb of St. Paul) and Waite Park (one of the cluster of communities that makes up the St. Cloud micropolitan area, 92 miles away) should be in the same congressional district. The 6th district wraps around the northern ring of Twin Cities suburbs and extends awkwardly to the northwest, appearing like some blocky beast preparing to devour the metro area in its gaping, Limbaugh-esque maw. More specifically, it’s the most politically conservative area (if it can even be called an “area”) of the state, sitting on top of the geographically smaller, more densely populated, most liberal area of the state — the 5th (Minneapolis) and 4th (St. Paul) districts. The district is contorted in its southeastern-most corner to absorb the population of the conservative eastern suburbs instead of extending into more moderate, less populous (but more geographically contiguous) areas around St. Cloud.

Minnesota's 6th congressional district

I’m not sure who was responsible for the gerrymandering of the current Minnesota congressional district map — whether it was Democrats looking to sequester hardcore conservatives in a single district, or Republicans hoping to expand their influence over a generally “blue” (or at least “indigo”) state. But in the end, all that matters is that it produced an environment that would not only elect Michele Bachmann, but even re-elect her after she had already become a national laughingstock last fall.

(Thanks to Dusty Trice for this one.)

Why we should resign ourselves to acceptance of the Geithner plan

I was underwhelmed from the beginning with President Obama’s choices of Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, and the events of the last couple of weeks have shored up a lot of public opinion that Geithner, in particular, may not have the right vision to shepherd the economy into a genuine recovery. But, for the moment, his plan is all we’ve got.

It doesn’t help that economic heavyweights like Paul Krugman are down on Geithner’s plan, but for now I will take limited solace in the words of economist Brad DeLong:

Q: What if markets never recover, the assets are not fundamentally undervalued, and even when held to maturity the government doesn’t make back its money?

A: Then we have worse things to worry about than government losses on TARP-program money–for we are then in a world in which the only things that have value are bottled water, sewing needles, and ammunition.

In other words, there may be a better plan out there; this plan we have may not work; but if it doesn’t, the reason it won’t is because things are so fundamentally screwed up that probably nothing would have saved us.

Yeah… that, uh, makes me feel… better?

(Found, as usual, on Daring Fireball.)