"Too big to fail" meets "Just the right size to steal from the taxpayers."

Sounds like a horror movie - and believe me, if you read this piece by Jill Schlessinger at CBS News' Econowatch, you will be sickened by this colossal boondoggle that not only cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars but actually enriched Geithner's Wall Street friends in the process - friends who had just themselves been bailed out by us:

OK, so let's get this straight: the financial world is melting down, Uncle Sam had just saved the bankers' butts and now Tim Geithner the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) was going to wimp-out? Yes, the Great Gazoo strikes again! (My friend pointed out that our current Treasury Secretary and former tax cheat bears a striking resemblance to this esoteric character from "The Flintstones" - Geithner has been the Great Gazoo since!)

When Geithner/Gazoo says, "Hello Dumb Dumb," he's talking to us! The Great Gazoo shafted the US taxpayer in the AIG debacle and in the process, enriched the counterparties who dragged us into this mess. The SIG TARP report noted that "structure and effect of the FRBNY's assistance to AIG ... effectively transferred tens of billions of dollars of cash from the government to AIG's counterparties."

Oh, and remember all of those claims by Goldman Sachs brass that the firm had "perfectly hedged" its exposure to AIG? Not so fast, boys. According to the New York Times, "among its notable findings, the report challenged Goldman's position that it should not have been forced to bear losses on its dealings with A.I.G. because it had successfully hedged away any exposure. Mr. Barofsky said that Goldman's hedges were unlikely to have held up amid the market turbulence of late last year."

The "SIG TARP" (Special Inspector General for TARP Neil Barofsky) continues his single minded pursuit of the robber barons who took advantage of the financial meltdown to abscond with hundreds of billions in taxpayer monies. 

The question is, what to do with Geithner? Unfortunately, the authorities would probably frown on a good old fashioned tar and feathering party, but perhaps now we can question Obama's judgment in hiring this tax cheat, this crook to run the Treasury Department. At the very least, these revelations should put pressure on the president to fire him, or give him the option of resigning.

Either way, Geithner's got to go.