Business columns: Good news: Geithner is getting angry

Stanley Bing
Fortune.com

I admit to feeling a thrill “when executives drop the whole statesman-like thing and get down to what really works: force,” said Stanley Bing. According to The Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner shed his polite facade last week to launch a profane rant against his fellow regulators, who were nitpicking his proposals for reforming the financial sector. “Enough is enough,” Geithner reportedly shouted, while tossing in several choice four-letter words.

I take the treasury secretary’s outburst as a sign that we will, after all, see meaningful financial reform this year. “When executives start being abusive, things get done.” The regulators gathered in the Treasury conference room were missing the big picture while citing “a million reasons” for doing nothing. It sounds as if Geithner had ample reason to scatter a few F-bombs.

Then again, “it could have been worse for the recipients of Geithnerian ire.” Historians say that once, Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar dealt with an uncooperative underling by plucking out his eyeball. “Times have changed since then, but not quite completely, I guess.”