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We're starting to hear this all over, from people in direct contact with him and from the press: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is starting to fry. And really, what mortal in his position wouldn't?

The New York Times today notes that Treasury is having trouble hiring enough people fast enough. One hint we've been getting is that any number of candidates have been disqualified for personal tax trouble. The Times reports:

[A]lmost all the top posts beneath Mr. Geithner are still vacant. Though he has hired about 50 senior advisers -- about half the number he hopes to recruit -- the White House has become so worried about potential tax problems and other issues in the backgrounds of candidates that it has nominated only a handful of people.

Writing on Cafe Hayek, Russ Roberts takes pity:

All the aides in the world wouldn't make any difference. It's an impossible task.

Most us have seen what happens in a workplace that's understaffed. There are days when you have to say, hey, we're not getting to that. Many of us are now picking up work that used to be done by colleagues who've been laid off.

But Geithner's trying to save the world as we know it. The Times writes, "[T]here are signs that events are getting ahead of him":

Administration officials say they are postponing their plan to produce a detailed road map for overhauling the nation's financial regulatory system by April, in time for the Group of 20 meeting in London. Though officials say they will still develop basic principles in time for the meeting, the plan will not include much detail.
Treasury officials are also still scrambling to decide details of their plan to buy up as much as $1 trillion in toxic assets from the nation's banks, one month after being widely criticized for presenting a plan that lacked any specifics on how it would work.

categories: Players

10:23 - March 9, 2009

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