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This was the wrong guy to look to as either a messiah or even a guru. Being part of the Paulson-Bernanke-Geithner troika was hardly a recommendation to take the lead in the Obama Administration as Treasury Secretary.
Inconsistency and inconstancy are sins the financial world is reluctant to forgive.Wikipedia gives him credit for some of the worst calls of the troika, especially throwing increasingly more money down the rathole of AIG and failing to bail out Lehman when he had advocated rescuing Bear Stearns earlier.
In March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns;[9][17] in the same year, he is believed to have played a pivotal role in both the decision to bail out AIG as well as the government decision not to save Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy.[18] As a Treasury official, he helped manage multiple international crises of the 1990s[11] in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand.[12]
These were not notable for being handled especially well.
His personal credibility was shot by his egregious behavior with respect to his personal taxes ( he was reimbursed and sign a document saying that he was responsible for paying his taxes...and he didn't. When caught, he only paid up what was not covered by a statute of limitations -- until the furor over his appointment became too much.
At the Senate confirmation hearings, it was revealed that Geithner had not paid $35,000 in self-employment taxes for several years,[24] even though he had acknowledged his obligation to do so, and had filed a request for, and received, a payment for half the taxes owed. The failure to pay self-employment taxes was noted during a 2006 audit by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in which Geithner was assessed additional taxes of $14,847 for the 2003 and 2004 tax years. Geithner also failed to pay the self-employment taxes for the 2001 and 2002 tax years until after Obama expressed his intent to nominate Geithner to be Secretary of Treasury.[25] He also deducted the cost of his children's sleep-away camp as a dependent care expense, when only expenses for day care are eligible for the deduction.[26] Geithner subsequently paid the IRS the additional taxes owed,[27] and was charged $15,000 interest, but was not fined for late payment.[28] As President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner annually completed an ethics statement noting any taxes due or unpaid, along with any other obligations. Geithner's completed statement did not surface during confirmation hearings.
In a statement to the Senate panel considering his nomination, Geithner called the tax issues "careless," "avoidable" and "unintentional" errors, and he said he wanted to "apologize to the committee for putting you in the position of having to spend so much time on these issues."[27] Geithner testified that he used TurboTax to prepare his own return and that the tax errors are his own responsibility.[29] This statement is in conflict with statements by the Obama campaign that Geithner was advised by his accountant that he did not owe the taxes.[30] The Washington Post quoted a tax expert who said that TurboTax has not been programmed to handle self-employment taxes when the user identifies himself as being employed.[31] Geithner said at the hearing that he was always under the impression that he was an employee, not a self-employed contractor,[31] while he served as director of the Policy Development and Review Department of the IMF.[7] Geithner comments are contradicted by the Senate report that showed he was not only informed of his status, but that he actively applied for the allowance.[32]
Had he been a financial wizard, it might have passed but he is hardly that.
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