It's become more and more clear that one of the big initial mistakes President Obama made was selecting Timothy Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury.
Geithner, as former head of the New York Fed, was, to put it kindly, at least knee-deep in the regulatory mismanagement that led to the gush of slime that nearly destroyed our financial system in the fall of 2008. 
As questions about Geithner's involvement in the AIG bailout and sweetheart deals for a group of big banks continue to surface, it's important to note a couple of things. These events took place during the Bush administration, not Obama's. However, in selecting Geithner as his Treasury Secretary, Obama took on whatever baggage Geithner had amassed while he was still at the Fed. And it was plenty.
If it wasn't so blatantly hypocritical, you could savor the irony of Republicans starting to mount calls for Geithner's scalp even though the damage he oversaw took place under a Republican administration.
But since Obama did take on the Geithner baggage, dislodging the Treasury Secretary would be seen as a blow to the president. That craving to weaken Obama is what's behind the drumbeat to investigate new revelations about the AIG bailout.
But even if you put the least incriminating interpretation on the revelations that the New York Fed pressured AIG into not disclosing certain information about the bailout that the giant conglomerate received in the fall of 2008 you're still left with a really bad taste in your mouth.
Even if this pressure was really only a very strong suggestion, as the Fed is saying now, it still stinks.
The reason? Here you have the most important bank regulator, especially of those banks "too big to fail," encouraging or suggesting that a company should not disclose information to the public, which by this time was the major shareholder in AIG.
