Monday, March 23, 2009

chuckling on geithner

I've noticed that Timothy Geithner, the United States Secretary of the Treasury, has suffered a lot of attacks from across the political spectrum. He is possibly the only man in the history of the internet age about whom lefty bloggers, wingnuts, Fox News, CNBC, hate radio and the mainstream media have ever been so unanimously in agreement. Dude sucks, they say. Dude sucks big time. Timmeh!

Unlike normal people, poor chuckling does not thoroughly understand the current economic situation, particularly the gritty details of the financial industry meltdown. It's embarrassing to admit that such easily understandable financial instruments such as derivatives or bundles of toxic debt are outside my area of expertise. How to re-ignite the credit markets? Beats me. I have to lean on the analysis of experts on these kinds of complex issues.

Who are the experts in this case? Conservatives? Puh-leeeze. Get back to your golf courses and find the goddammed WMD's losers. And no offense friends, but in this case I'm not going to look to the mainstream media or lefty bloggers to help me form an opinion. Nope. Looks to me like it's Obama vs. Krugman.

I consider past performance. Krugman is recognized by his peers as one of the top economists, he has a history of being right about most everything and he is one of the true heroes of the Bush years. Obama is an awesome strategist and has made an incredible series of bold, innovative decisions that proved to be the right ones. He doesn't have Krugman's expertise in economics, but he is not without high level advice. The lefty blogs seem to think that Geithner is somehow tricking Obama, taking advantage of his naivete. I'm skeptical of that theory. Again and again Obama has proven to be the least naive person in the room.

So Krugman or Obama? Well, since I don't have to choose, and frankly don't know squat about the financial industry, I guess I won't. But I'll tell you this. Although I don't think we should be brain dead Obama cheerleaders, pathetic lefty versions of wingnuts that spout the party line no matter what, I do find it disturbing that so many lefty blogs have found harmonic convergence with wingnut demogogues on the Geithner issue. I'm not saying that should make anyone change their mind, but it would sure as hell make me take a hard look at the thought processes that made my words and beliefs nearly indistinguishable from the wingnuts.

Update: I just learned that Timmeh's middle name is Franz. Sounds like a Nazi to me. Or a silly body builder. Or a gay fashionista. Or a pumped gay Nazi fashionista! Maybe we should start calling him "Franz," just like the wingnuts call Obama "Hussein." Wouldn't that be cul?

Yep.