Geithner, Part II: The Record

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Yesterday, I suggested that Timothy Geithner's willingness to take advantage of loopholes to skirt the tax he owes should disqualify him from serving as Treasury Secretary, and, by extension, oversee the Internal Revenue Service. Today, in an interview on CNBC and a short blog post, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera challenges Geithner's qualifications as a bank regulator:

He was involved in the decision to allow Lehman Brothers to default -- and has been just as mealy-mouthed about it as Henry M. Paulson Jr. He does not appear to have sounded any kind of alarm as the problems began to mount in the summer of 2007. And it was on his watch as New York Fed president that the derivatives we now call "toxic assets" grew exponentially. He doesn't seem to have been worried about that.

Read it, and watch it, here. For the record, Nocera prefers 81-year-old banking veteran Paul Volcker.