In answer to the question about Timothy Geithner

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

Is this guy a complete and irretrievable douche nozzle?

I offer the following:

“Stress Test” takes a few direct jabs at Warren, whom he describes as “one of our most ardent and eloquent liberal critics”—right before slamming her. “Her criticisms of the financial rescue, if well intentioned, were mostly unjustified, and her TARP oversight hearings often felt more like made-for-YouTube inquisitions than serious inquiries,” Geithner writes. “She was worried about the right things, but she was better at impugning our choices—as well as our integrity and our competence —than identifying any feasible alternatives.”

Geithner’s more sustained attack, however, is on the kind of populism Warren has come to represent on the left, which he describes as “the Old Testament view” that “[t]he venal should be punished. The irresponsible shouldn’t be bailed out.” He cites the appetite for “Old Testament vengeance,” “Old Testament justice,” “Old Testament impulses,” “Old Testament populism,” “Old Testament cravings,” and so forth, no fewer than 18 times.

Oy.

Geither

[merrily]

1. Ah, the L word.

Why is okay for wealth to be transferred to the rich, regardless of whether they've been naughty or nice?

And in which testament or which religion, for that matter, is venal okay?

"Old Testament" my ass. In the Old Testament, all kinds of heinous things were described flatly. Slavery? No condemnation. Banishing your wife's slave and your son with her without money or protection? No problem. Au contraire. Congrats. You founded three religions.

Offering your daughters up to be raped by angry villagers? No problem. You deserve to be saved while the village is destroyed (but your wife gets turned into a condiment that will soon melt in the rain for daring to take a backward glance).

Sen. Warren, also a former Republican, is talking very New Testament, like, oh, I don't know, the current Pope, perhaps the most famous living Christian (NT) guy in the world?

What Geithner really meant to say was, "She called me out publicly--and I am so far above that that I must punish her, ala the OT."

What was your question again?

[JHB]

2. Prosecuting "club" members for fraud and illegalities when they do it is "Old Testament"?

Sounds like a man who has an excessively narrow definition of "feasible".