Brooks on Geithner

David Brooks has a column defending Timothy Geithner's handling of the financial crisis: "the evidence of the past eight months suggests that Geithner was mostly right and his critics were mostly wrong. The financial sector is in much better shape than it was then. TARP money is being repaid, and the debate now is what to do with the billions that were never needed. It now seems clear that nationalization would have been an unnecessary mistake — potentially expensive and dangerously disruptive. The course of events has vindicated the administration's handling of its first big challenge." What will Mr. Geithner do next? Mr. Brooks says he will have to deal with "the deficits," "the rising populism in Congress" and "intense public cynicism about government." Hmm. I wonder where all those deficits, populism, and cynicism came from. Could they just possibly have anything to do with those policies of Mr. Geithner that Mr. Brooks would have us believe have been so wonderfully vindicated over the past eight months?