This morning, the new “Morning Jolt” e-mail newsletter launches, and the first edition includes a couple of quick notes on the quicksand that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner marched into when he was head of the New York Fed. It’s been too much of a business-page story so far; the Times of London puts it succinctly:

That the government didn’t seek to save the taxpayer any money looks pretty bad. Its defence will no doubt be that it didn’t have time. But the unarguable scandal at AIG is that the US taxpayer was made to pay the bill without being shown the cheque. New York Fed representatives have said Geithner was “recused [disqualified] from matters dealing with specific companies”, as he was preparing to be nominated as Treasury secretary in late 2008. But as the man with the plan, Geithner has a lot of questions to answer.

The selection of Geithner – and the rather lame explanations and excuses coming from the White House, i.e., Geithner had no idea what his staff was telling AIG on a decision worth billions in taxpayer money — are the ultimate example of how President Obama isn’t really interested in the details when it comes to fiscal policy. Your regular denunciations of fat-cats on Wall Street not paying their fair share are rather meaningless when you pick the guy who helped save them from the most minor of losses to run the Treasury Department. So far, there’s been no word from the Obama administration that hiding AIG’s payments to Goldman Sachs, et al., were wrong, never mind that there would be consequences for Geithner.

Liberals may denounce Geithner as a pawn of Wall Street, but how do they excuse the man who put him in charge of the Treasury Department?