The partisan gridlock in Washington combined with a slow moving vetting process has led to many of the key posts in the Obama Administration remaining vacant. Even as the administration asks for more power to police the internet and meddle in other country’s affairs abroad it lacks the staff to meet current responsibilities.

It would seem the Obama administration is hinting that they will (or at least want the market to think they will) prioritize bondholders over everyone else if the debt limit is reached.

The genius of democracy is the idea that in a room full of smart people, the smartest person is the room.

Former TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky’s new book Bailout is worth reading for so many reasons, some of which are simply the hilarious anecdotes, but trusted Geithner adviser Lee Sachs is one of the distinctly less hilarious parts about the book. I remember writing something along the lines of “!!!” in the margin when I noticed his name and infamous affiliation “Tricadia” in Ron Suskind’s book but it wasn’t until Bailout—and I’ve read a lot of these goddamn books!—that I got a real sense of his influence on Geithner—and the magnitude of the taxpayer shakedown he might have pulled off had a lesser cop been assigned to patrol the bailout beat.

It has occurred to members of the Congress of the United States that this Libor bid rigging thing might be a good opportunity to remind the banking industry that it’s election time. So the House Banking Committee, whose members are placed there to assure privileged access to Wall Street campaign donations, will hold a hearing to ask Tim Geithner what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it.

When all this stuff was going down, Mr. Geithner was the head of the New York Federal Reserve.

A Washington Post article that essentially told readers that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would focus on issues that matter to business in his discussions with Chinese leaders. The most important issue for workers in dealing with China is a drop in the value of the dollar relative to the yuan.

Our news roundup continues with selected stories and links from April 23, 2012, about, swaps regulation, CalPERS, Argentina oil seizure, Brazil, labor strikes, Supreme Court.rent control, Tim Geithner, Jim Crow, People’s Park, nuclear power and more.

Just to be clear, what the resigning midlevel exec in the GS London office said in his New York Times op-ed was that the culture at Goldman Sachs was such that its clients were being bilked by trading schemes knowingly designed to rip them off, while the GS execs laughed about how gullible their “muppet” clients were for trusting them. That was shocking, but it wasn’t unfair or news.

President Obama appeared in the Rose Garden this morning to respond to the dismal jobs report that showed unemployment rising to 9.2 percent over 18 months after the recession supposedly ended. He responded by not mentioning that number or grappling with what it means.

Instead, he continued the excuses and pseudo-economic gibberish that makes sense only to Tea-GOP Zombies and which explains why we’ve made virtually no progress in regaining the jobs we lost.

The Republican’s have been so successful in their hostage taking tactics not because the GOP are amazing negotiators but due to the fact Obama wants them to have a hostages. The Obama administration is told the Republicans they are negotiating with that they don’t believe the 14th amendment grants it the authority to ignore the [...]