If a corporate financial officer in the private sector had overseen the wasteful spending of hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars without producing anything to show for it, he would be summarily fired. But corporate performance standards don’t apply to President Obama’s Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner. He was a guiding hand on the government boondoggles and bailouts that have enraged taxpayers since 2008. He has insisted that Obama’s $814 billion economic “stimulus” program was responsible for “substantial improvements in arresting what was the worst recession globally we’ve seen in generations.” But the economy remains stagnant, unemployment continues near double digits, and public confidence in government is at historic lows.
Geithner has also been an aggressive advocate for Obama’s flagship program to prevent home foreclosures, the Home Affordable Modification Program. This has been another outright failure, with more than 2.5 million homes lost to foreclosure since the start of the recession in 2007. Another 3.3 million homes could be lost to foreclosure or distressed sale over the next four years, according to Moody’s Analytics. The only concrete beneficiaries of HAMP have been banks.
