Who are We to Lecture?

If we did not already have enough reasons for why fat-cat spokesman Tim Geithner is the last person we want as Secretary of the Treasury, he has now provided us with another.  According to the BBC News report of today’s Strategic Economic Dialog between the heads of sixteen of our Government agencies and representatives of twenty Chinese Government Departments, Geithner began the event by preaching to the Chinese.  What was the sermon?  Well, the primary text, taken from the Gospel According to Goldman Sachs, was that China should develop “a more market-based economy and a more sophisticated financial system.”  This was then followed by a text from the First Epistle of Timothy the Apostle:

The challenge is to lay the foundation for a new growth model, driven more by domestic demand.

In other words Geithner was spelling out a recipe (with Julia Child-like precision) for the Chinese to cook up (continuing the metaphor) an economic mess as catastrophic as our own, probably with the same global consequences (or worse).

There is a bright side to the lunacy of this sort of public embarrassment.  The Chinese tend to believe that every experience can provide teaching moments.  Geithner’s sermon may have given them their first serious appreciation of a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment!