Ah, Timothy Geithner! Tim Geithner. Timmy. Li’l Tim, as comedian Bill Mahre calls him. Tiny Tim, we’ll be calling him soon. The poor guy just lacks “gravitas,” as they say. The problem with our current treasury secretary isn’t his policies. Really — the Right is wrong about this. Nobody truly understands our policies to battle the Great Recession, at least not yet. It’s still a hodgepodge. President Obama acknowledges this fact himself, saying we’ll try one solution after another until something actually starts to work!

No, the problem with Timothy Geithner is the way he looks and sounds — like a kid. A fifteen-year-old high school sophomore who’s nervously reciting his book report in front of the class. Afraid, more than anything, that his voice might crack and make his classmates laugh. That’s why the stock market usually tumbles when he delivers a policy address. The stockbrokers are waiting for his voice to crack, and signs that he might look very afraid, or maybe even cry! Recently, the stock market went UP after Secretary Geithner spoke, but that’s because cameras and microphones were banned from the room. He should do that more often — it might jumpstart the economy!

Looks are more important to leadership than you might think. After all, during these hard times, imagine if Barack Obama looked like…Urkel!

Take two of our most prominent treasury secretaries in recent memory — Henry Paulson and Robert Rubin. Both secretaries, we know now, screwed up royally, and we’ll be paying for their mistakes, in terms of lost jobs and decimated wealth, for years to come. But EVERYBODY took them seriously at the time. Rubin was even taken seriously for years AFTER he left the Treasury Department, if you can believe it. One could imagine either former secretary on the face of currency: Really, if Ulysses S. Grant, who presided over one of the most corrupt administrations in American history, can grace the fifty-dollar bill, Rubin and Paulson wouldn’t be out of place on, say, the two-dollar bill.

My guess? Put Rubin or Paulson back at Treasury, and the Dow Jones would jump 1,000 points in a week. Just for LOOKING like they were in charge. As for Tiny Tim, let’s just hope and pray that he doesn’t break out in pimples!

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