Many critics have taken issue with Geithner's response to the financial crisis as the president of the New York Federal Reserve.
"Geithner's experience at the New York Fed, which initially was viewed as a plus, is now looking less favorable," Dartmouth government professor Linda Fowler said.
Some of the criticism is driven by a belief that the New York Fed is overly focused on the stock market in determining monetary policy, rather than on long-term consequences, Fowler said.
Fiscal conservatives -- such as John Berlau, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-profit, public policy organization that promotes limited government -- have widely criticized Geithner's response to the bank failures and questioned his expertise.
"Geithner's career rise has consisted largely of falling upwards after organizing bailouts, even if the bailouts fail or prove to be unnecessary," Berlau wrote in a December editorial on the Institute's web site.
The discontent is not limited to conservatives: Many mainstream and liberal publications have also questioned Geithner's actions during the fall bank failures.
"Timothy Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for Treasury secretary, has some explaining to do," The New York Times wrote in a Dec. 14 editorial that catalogued Geithner's errors in judgment during the fall financial crisis.
It described the results of Geithner's actions as "cataclysmic."
In particular, many economic experts and media commentators have publicly called for Geithner to explain his decision to allow Lehman Brothers to fail, but to bailout American International Group.
"Geithner should be asked at his confirmation hearing to explain which firms were threatened by an AIG collapse, in what amounts and how those entanglements justify an ongoing bailout," The New York Times editorial board wrote. "Mr. Geithner must also explain how such entanglements came to be the norm on his watch."
Some economists defend those decisions, however, saying that critics, who have the benefit of hindsight, are judging Geithner unfairly.
"The decision to let Lehman Brothers go under proved to be clearly wrong, but this is an ex-post comment, while [Geithner], [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke and [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson ['68] had to make a decision in real time," Dartmouth economics professor Ilias Papaioannou said. "My view is that the Obama economics team is top-notch."
Policymakers and members of the media have also been disturbed by a perceived lack of transparency in terms of how taxpayer money has been spent as part of the bailout plan, not just by Geithner, but by the Treasury department as well.
If Geithner is confirmed as Treasury Secretary, he will be charged with addressing many of the problems that critics allege he played a role in creating.
"Beyond any immediate actions we may take, we need a recovery plan for both Wall Street and Main Street -- a plan that stabilizes our financial system and gets credit flowing again, while at the same time addressing our growing foreclosure crisis, helping our struggling auto industry and creating and saving 2.5 million jobs," Obama said when he announced the nominees to head his economic team in late November.
Geithner's critics have also pointed out that Treasury secretaries usually come to the White House with corporate business experience -- Paulson was formerly the head of Goldman Sachs -- but Geithner has spent the majority of his career as a civil servant and does not have an MBA.
This too may have less to do with Geithner than with larger political decisions, the financial climate and, in this case, the President-elect's staffing choices. While Obama's cabinet has been lauded in the media for its ethnic and gender diversity, it does not include a nominee with executive business experience, according to a recent article by Bloomberg.
"It is a void that the folks that the President-elect has selected seem to be overly biased toward government service or regulatory activities," Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, told Bloomberg.
Dartmouth economics professor Bruce Sacerdote argued that this does not detract from Geithner's qualifications.
"Geithner is uniquely qualified to be Treasury secretary and he is a great choice," Sacerdote wrote in an e-mail to The Dartmouth. "He combines a tremendous amount of practical experience, common sense and economic knowledge. My limited understanding is that Geithner was one of the people pushing hard to act decisively, given the initial signs of the crisis, and to head off some of the disasters we have seen."
Despite the many concerns about Geithner's nomination, general consensus among pundits, analysts and media outlets is that none of them are severe enough to block his confirmation as Treasury secretary, according to Fowler.
"These issues will get a lot of attention at the hearings, but I don't think they will stop the nomination from being confirmed," Fowler said. "Senators will raise them, however, to put the new secretary on notice."
A spokesperson for the Obama transition team did not return requests for comment by press time.
