Geithner's Wild 100-Day Ride

Susan Walsh / AP Photo Timothy Geithner marks 100 days in office today, and few Treasury secretaries have had starts that were more eventful. Allan Dodds Frank grades the highlights and missteps.

If the stock market is your indicator of success, then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner must be doing something right, given the rally that has recently pushed the market into the black for the year.

Yet to me, Geithner’s first 100 days, a threshold we mark today, hardly provide enough time to discern fairly whether he has done anything right so far. He is faced with so many challenges, so many financial stalls to muck out, that it may be a long time before we can measure his results beyond his growing skill at projecting confidence. He showed political acumen in late March announcing that the public will share in the spoils the government will funnel to Wall Street. He called it PPIP, the “public private invest program.”

My view on Geithner’s opening foray is somewhat akin to Warren Buffett’s view of quarterly reports. We should not pay any attention to short-term results and concentrate on whether he operates by honest principles we believe are fair and good for the country.

Geithner comes to the great game with lots of skills and benefits. He has a background in international finance at Treasury and the International Monetary Fund, five years, two months as president and chief executive of the New York Federal Reserve and long-term student-mentor relationships with many of the Wall Street wise men who helped create the mess we are all in now.

Geithner was close to Robert Rubin, the Clinton-era Treasury secretary who subsequently chaired the Citigroup board as the “too big to fail” bank engaged in more and more risky and questionable behavior. He dined with Citi officials often (see Jo Becker & Gretchen Morgenson’s excellent New York Times article and Gary Weiss in the now-defunct Portfolio). So how will Geithner handle Citi this week if the stress tests for banks he has set up show that the government needs to pump more money into Citi? Will the government rollup of troubled assets just keep going without Geithner ever holding up to close inspection in public those responsible for costing the taxpayers billions of dollars?

Yes, the 48-year-old Treasury secretary works hard and yes, he is a quick study who recovers rapidly from his gaffes. The one that comes to mind I witnessed at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York March 25 when he attempted to duck a question about a top Chinese government banking official’s musing on the alleged need for a new global super reserve currency. Geithner had not read the Chinese governor’s remarks but was striving to be respectful, thoughtful, and open on the subject, three attributes that in general I believe we need to see more of from Treasury secretaries.

Still, he should have known that practically the first thing every Treasury secretary learns the hard way is that commenting on the dollar is a surefire way to roil the world’s currency markets. That, of course, is exactly what Geithner’s initial remarks did, until the end of the Q&A, when his friendly and perceptive questioner, former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, salvaged the rookie’s mistake by asking Geithner for a clarification he knew would calm the currency markets almost instantaneously.

It was a moment that generated stories in The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Bloomberg. Its significance to me, however, was different. It showed how the old guard is trying to guide the Treasury secretary and protect the status quo antebellum as much as possible.

While calling for financial reform during that speech, Geithner said: “To get through this, we need the private sector to take risks, and in order to do so, they need confidence about the rules of the game going forward.”