Exit strategy for Geithner

The AIG mess doesn't exactly help the already precarious state of the Treasury Secretary's tenure. He was, after all, the architect of the original bailout and was at least aware of the outrageous AIG bonuses. Henry Blodget at Clusterstock thinks the guys need to go - not just because of AIG but because he has been less than convincing as the person to lead the U.S. out of the banking disaster.

In September, Geithner and Hank Paulson engineered an AIG bailout in which Paulson's firm (and one of Geithner's patrons on the New York Fed) secretly received $13 billion of taxpayer money that no taxpayer was told about. Now that taxpayers have found out about it, they are justifiably pissed. In any event, Republicans have been emboldened by Geithner's stumbles, and they're getting closer to calling for his head.

There doesn't appear to be quite enough to put him over the edge, which as any manager will tell you, is the worst of all worlds: Not bad enough to be fired, not good enough to do an effective job.