Well, Tim Geithner is shorter than me, anyway. Not that he’s that worried about it:
I’m almost 5-9, just below 5-9. 5-8-and-¾, something like that. You can round down, you can say 5-8. I’m relatively secure in my height.
But for me, the main take-away from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s profile is the bottom line of TARP. Whatever else you can say about it, it wasn’t a total bath for the taz-payers. Au contraire:
While there is some debate over how to calculate the proceeds from the various bailouts — TARP, the auto companies, the F.D.I.C. programs and Fannie and Freddie, among others — the evidence is persuasive. ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative organization, which keeps a tally of the bailout, puts the current profit at $32 billion. The White House Office of Management and Budget estimates that Fannie and Freddie will turn a profit of $179 billion over the next decade.
I tend to see that as an almost perfect coda to the Obama administration: maligned, battered but ultimately deeply, quietly successful.
(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
The Dish 