On April 19, Geithner evidently thought he had a criminal shakedown operation well in hand. Oops.

No private entity should have the power to bring down a president with an arbitrary and unjustifiable wave of the hand. No company should be able to line up a nation’s assets and orchestrate a fire sale on behalf of Wall Street, and then give them a private showing about what’s in store. They should not have the right demand cuts that destroy critical social safety net programs that the public overwhelmingly supports like Social Security and Medicare, and they most certainly should not be able to crown a new king as they implement Wall Street’s shock doctrine vision for the future.