Secretary of Tax Cheats

Timothy Geithner's little "goof" in forgetting to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for years has been getting the white glove treatment from the mainstream press. Aw shucks, it was just a silly, completely innocent mistake. Is this what we can expect from the guy who will head the Treasury and thus, the IRS? Apparently he not only has issues with handling his own money, but check out this from the NYTimes:

Where Was Geithner in Turmoil?
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/business/25sorkin.html?_r=1&dbk

President-elect Barack Obama unveiled on Monday an economic team with deep experience handling economic crises. But does the man at the center of this star-studded cast, Timothy F. Geithner, the nominee for Treasury secretary, have what is needed to take the nation in a new financial direction?
But Mr. Geithner’s involvement in several ultimately ill-fated efforts to buttress the American financial system is the very reason some Wall Street C.E.O.’s — a number of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of piquing the man who regulates them — question whether he’s up to the challenge.
“We have only two things to say about Tim Geithner, who we do not know: A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers,” said Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Throw in the Bear Stearns/Maiden Lane fiasco for good measure,” he said. “All of these ‘rescues’ are a disaster for the taxpayer, for the financial markets and also for the Federal Reserve System as an organization. Geithner, in our view, deserves retirement, not promotion.”
Ouch.
“He was in the room at every turn of the crisis,” said another executive who participated in several such confidential meetings with Mr. Geithner. “You can look at that both ways.”

Mmm, hmmm. That surely inspires confidence. A tax scoflaw AND a lousy financial overseer to handle the worst economic crisis in decades.