Mmm, what a tasty way to start a Tuesday morning — with reports of an obscenity-laden tussle between government money nerds over the very sexy topic of bank regulation! Here is what you need to know: Tim Geithner wants a single authority called the National Bank Supervisor providing oversight over our nation’s many banks, and Sheila Bair opposes this consolidation. On Friday, Geithner gathered Bair and Ben Bernanke and Mary Schapiro, the SEC Chairman, to quit running their yaps to newspapers about how much they hated all his ideas. MORE »

Back when George Bush was the 36th best president of the United States, he suggested that the incoming administration appoint a Benevolent Despot Emperor of Automobiles, colloquially known as a “car czar,” to tend to the heaping pile of unsold inventory and feces that is the American automotive industry. And it seemed like Barack Obama would appoint this czar, in deference to tradition. MORE »

Financial wizard Timothy Geithner is thisclose to becoming our next President of Money, but two things stand in his way: he failed to file payroll taxes for a few years, and he hired a housekeeper who was a temporary space alien. One can’t do anything about his monster-changeling maid, as this is a common affliction of people who apply for fancy cabinet positions, but the tax thing obviously cannot stand. However, Senator Chuck Grassley — a veritable Republican, and thus a hater of all things tax-related — tried to help him out in a hearing today. MORE »

Oh everybody was soooo excited that this New York guy, Tim “Timothy” Geithner, had deigned to be Barack Obama’s treasury secretary. But now it comes out that for several years he paid state and federal income taxes but no payroll taxes! Well, everybody knows that payroll taxes are just for poor people anyway. They’re not even “real” taxes. MORE »

Oh dang! Rumor has it that Tim Geithner, our Treasury Secretary-to-be, does not care for our beloved Sheila Bair and her maverick ways. Bair is the chairman of the FDIC and one of the few high-profile Bush administration appointees to very repeatedly and publicly bang the drum about how if our financial crisis is ultimately due to people’s mortgages going south, maybe we ought to work on fixing those bad mortgages. She’s a working class hero! So naturally, Giethner hates her guts. MORE »

Barack Obama will have so many advisors telling him how to spend the nation’s billions! Let’s see, we’ve got this Geithner guy who financial types seem to like, and also the communist Larry Summers … who else? To answer these pressing questions, Obama will hold another press conference and respond to complicated financial inquiries with “I will buy you all a new puppy.” Stick with us! His magical press conference is due to commence at the top of the hour. MORE »

Well this is terribly disappointing! After a veritable two weeks of post-election speculation about our future Secretary of the Treasury, with an endless parade of sexist buffoons and kindly forest-giants to choose from, Barack Obama goes for some dude named Tim Geithner who appears to be of normal stature and possessed of no serious personality defects. YAWN. MORE »