Geithner or Holder?

The preceding post has received a fair amount of attention, much of it surprisingly respectful. The biggest surprise of all was this mention by BooMan, the masochistic frog-wrangler who, in the past, has received a fair amount of ribbing in these cyber-pages.

Joe Cannon makes a compelling case for why the Wall Street protestors should make Tim Geithner's resignation one of their core demands. He does it, however, without making any argument whatsoever about what Geithner has done wrong. He simply states that he's been "awful." It's more about the symbolism, and I can't say he's wrong.

I've made the case for his awfulness in previous posts, and many other writers have made the argument more persuasively. At this stage of the game, there is no need to argue the obvious, just as one need not consult a professional hydrologist before stating that water is wet. But BooMan makes an excellent point...

I can make a solid argument that the real problem is with Eric Holder at the Department of Justice, who hasn't done enough to hold the banking criminals accountable for their actions.

Damn. Y'know, I can't mount any sort of counter-argument. After all, the OWS crew does seem to be particularly (and justifiably) exercised by the fact that the Goldman Saxon hordes committed obvious crimes yet walked away scot free.

And yet, for some reason, the public doesn't seem pissed off at Holder. The film Inside Job mentions Geithner and Summers by name. Holder goes unreferenced, even though the Justice Department gets slammed. Why is that?

Let's get back to Geithner:

Part of this is about realistic expectations. I don't know that we've ever had a Treasury secretary who was an adversary of Wall Street. That's not how our system functions or has ever functioned. The equivalent would be to hire a secretary of Defense who was implacably opposed to defense spending.

To an extent, this is reasonable. But 2009 was a special case. The people wanted radical action, and instead they got...Larry and Timmy.

Here's another reason to mistrust Timmy. Put him in a purple suit and spray his hair green, and he'd look an awful lot like a certain supervillain...

Y'know...since the marvelous Heath Ledger is no longer with us -- and Hollywood will probably never stop making Batman movies -- maybe Timmy should see his upcoming retirement as more of an opportunity....