Geithner still stalls on banking overhaul details

Planning (there’s no other word for deliberateness like this) to not have a detailed plan for the April G20 summit of developed and top-tier developing nations is not blamable on staffing shortages or anything else.

It’s Geithner still trying to run out the clock on what is, from his neocentrist perspective, the least appealing of his options.

“Their huge problem is that the American public is not willing to accept large losses for large financial institutions,” said Vincent Reinhart, a former Fed official and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research and lobbying organization. “Everything they are doing is about having the smallest possible footprint on the federal budget. They don’t want to engage the Congress and they don’t want to engage the American people in that discussion.”

Tis true, even if the problem stems to fair degree from AEI pals of Reinhart.

Update on a related issue. The first choice to be Geither’s deputy, Annette L. Nazareth, did NOT withdraw because of tax issues. Rather, she was, rightfully, afraid, she’d be grilled on her past with the SEC, as a commissioner, given the SEC’s laxity, above all with Bernie Madoff.

“Much of this is of Obama’s own making,” said Professor Paul Light, an expert on the White House appointment process who teaches at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. “We’re now seeing a dramatic pendulum swing. This administration used a lot of political capital for getting some people through, and that created an issue for Republicans and late-night comedians.”

She never should have been considered in the first place