Jim Hightower

How ironic that the U.S. Senate confirmed Timothy Geithner to be our new treasury secretary only a week after President Obama, in his inaugural address, called on the American people to embrace a new era of personal responsibility.

Geithner, you see, flunked his own test of responsibility when he failed to pay some $34,000 in federal taxes he owed, which is ironic because he will now oversee the IRS and be America's top tax enforcement officer.

However, the White House and most senators insisted that Geithner's little tax boo boo had been an innocent oversight. More importantly, they said, he's got the expertise and experience America must have to get us through these treacherous financial times. He's been a senior official at treasury and the IMF, his defenders noted, and he headed the New York federal reserve bank for the past five years, overseeing Wall Street. "He isn't merely the best choice," gushed one Republican senator, "he's the only choice."

The only one? Really? In all of America, he's it?

True, Geithner is experienced – but at doing what? Peek into his years at the New York Fed, and you'll find that he was a practitioner of the loosey-goosey bank deregulation ideology that led to the financial collapse that's presently crushing our economy. And when the banks fell last year, he was a prime pusher of the Wall Street bailout scam, using hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to rescue the banking hotshots and the big investors who caused the crash.

The real reason that Geithner's tax violations were overlooked is, as one senator said admiringly: "He fits in." Wall Street wanted him, and they got him.

In all of America, couldn't Obama have found one person who "fits in" with consumers, workers, and taxpayers – rather than the thieves on Wall Street?