Whatever happened to “king dollar”? He may have abdicated.
The dollar is falling faster than the temperatures outside, down almost 3.5 percent since the G-20 meeting late last month, and yet Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — the alleged supporter of a “strong dollar policy” — can’t be found.
Even Ben Bernanke, the official banker for the Treasury and the lead culprit in weakening the greenback with QE2, complains he’s been left all alone to sort out the monumental mess of the economy while Geithner flits quietly to Asia and Silicon Valley for private sit-downs far from the public eye.
Indeed, Bernanke, the embattled chairman of the Federal Reserve, startled market-watchers with an op-ed article in the Washington Post yesterday complaining about his solitary fight against the economy’s demons — without Geithner providing a counterbalance for the markets.
“The Federal Reserve cannot solve all the economy’s problems on its own,” Bernanke wrote. “That will take time and the combined efforts of many parties, including the central bank, Congress, the administration, regulators and the private sector.”
Many Washington insiders are growing more heavy-handed about Geithner’s fate over his missing-in-action role during one of the most tumultuous months ever faced by Uncle Sam’s strained money machine.
They cite Treasury secretaries going back to Alexander Hamilton as being behind a strong central currency.
One labor group normally friendly to the White House demanded Geithner’s immediate resignation, blaming him for the Democratic Party’s setbacks in this week’s election.
“The new unemployment numbers — good, bad or indifferent — will only underscore the risk President Barack Obama runs by letting Tim Geithner remain,” said Rick Sloan, head of UCubed, a DC-based organized labor coalition for the unemployed.
“Geithner deserves the lion’s share of the blame for massive Democratic losses. His put-the-financiers-first policies failed dismally.”
“If not forced to resign soon, Geithner could add a sitting president of the United States to the 31 million Americans idled by the recession.”
A Wall Street source involved in Washington politics said the ranks of Geithner-haters appear to be swelling.
With the departure of White House adviser Larry Summers — Geithner’s mentor who got him the Treasury post — “there’s no one left to watch Tim’s back and he’s not likely to stick around much longer and get beat up by the Republicans.”
Defenders of Geithner blame his absence in late October on Asian talks seeking solutions to the currency wars among Western nations and China ahead of next week’s G-20 summit in South Korea. tharp@nypost.com