Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner may be most famous in the United States for cheating on his taxes (you can even buy a t-shirt to acknowledge his tax dodging), but he’s becoming a punch line in the rest of the world for different reasons.
I wrote two years ago about Chinese students erupting in laughter after Geithner claimed the Administration believed in a strong dollar.
Now he’s getting mocked by the Europeans.
After Friday’s post about the absurdity of Obama sending his Treasury Secretary to lecture the Europeans, you can imagine my great amusement today as I read that the Europeans basically told Geithner to go jump in a lake.
Here are some passages from the Reuters report.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s high-profile trip to Europe left some European officials more dumbstruck than starstruck. …”We can always discuss with our American colleagues. I’d like to hear how the United States will reduce its deficits … and its debts,” Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said somewhat tartly. Jean-Claude Juncker, the chairman of the Eurogroup, was even more to the point. “I don’t think it would be wise for me to report from an informal meeting that we have with the treasury secretary. We are not discussing the expansion or increase of the EFSF with a non-member of the euro area,” he said.
And here is a brief excerpt from the Financial Times.
…some eurozone finance ministers hit back at Mr Geithner’s comments, questioning the usefulness of his visit. “I found it peculiar that even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the eurozone, that they tell us what we should do and when we make a suggestion … that they say no straight away,” said Maria Fekter, Austria’s finance minister. Sweden’s Anders Borg said: “we need to make progress, but it’s quite clear the US has a big debt problem and the situation would be better if the US could show a sustainable way forward.”
When the dust settles, though, the fact that Secretary Geithner is getting laughed at and mocked by people in other countries is not that funny. Not because he doesn’t deserve abuse, but rather because the bad policies of the Obama Administration are resulting in genuine hardship and suffering.
And the fact that the Europeans are even further down the path that leads to fiscal crisis makes it all the more tragic. You would think American policy makers would learn what not to do.
Now if we could get this post into American media, there might be hope. Does anyone have pull with FOX, or are they in the Republican pocket?
I knew this was coming. It looks like scenes from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. I’m waiting for a cow to be launched over the wall, by catapult.
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Actually, they probably told Geitner:
“Dude, its hard enough that we’ve been exerting great effort to hide from our populations the fact that we are already operating on the descending portion of the Laffer Curve — and are on a perpetual 1-2% growth trendline to economic extinction.
So don’t rock the boat any further — a sea of humanity is rising in the east and we’re about to start taking water over the hull – go joke with someone else — maybe the Greek prime minister”.
“You would think American policy makers would learn what not to do….”
The few aberrant policy makers that override the inherent political interests in more government, have one more formidable obstacle to face: The Voter. Predictably the voter says: “You are telling me that there are no centrally planned shortcuts to prosperity and you want me to vote for you? Hell no! Give me the Hope and Change of perpetual motion machine designs! At the very least, I must first exhaust every possible Hope that Change to a collectively planned coercive and redistributive economy cannot bring prosperity. Then,….. if that does not work… well, then I will always have the opportunity to give you some consideration once we start sliding down fast. Won’t I?”
Seen the movie dozens of times. Alas, Americans — the historically lucky had so far been shielded from the sirens of centrally planned prosperity. No longer so. 2008 was the last exit to prosperity on the economic highway. Path to decline now sealed – Might as well drink some more Hope N Change before she sinks.
[…] he’s becoming a a bit of a joke in Europe. Earlier this month, a wide range of European policy makers basically told the Treasury Secretary to take a long walk off a short pier when he tried to offer advice on Europe’s fiscal […]
[…] he’s becoming a a bit of a joke in Europe. Earlier this month, a wide range of European policy makers basically told the Treasury Secretary to take a long walk off a short pier when he tried to offer advice on Europe’s fiscal […]
[…] Europeans told him to get lost when he tried to lecture them on fiscal policy in 2011. But don’t think they were being rude. […]