EVEN JIMMY CARTER...:

Treasury island: Geithner's lost crew (JEANNE CUMMINGS & LISA LERER, 3/6/09, Politico)

If President Barack Obama wants to boost confidence in his economic recovery plan, he’s going to have to assure the markets that there isn’t just one guy working on it.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is trying to stabilize the nation’s banking industry, implement a housing rescue plan and prop up a plunging stock market – all with about 18 vacant senior positions, virtually the entire upper echelon of his department.

The staff is so faceless that lobbyists have begun trading jokes about a “ghost” bureaucracy, given the many empty picture frames hanging on the department’s walls.

...wasn't such a laughingstock just six weeks in.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 6, 2009 5:57 PM