Nobody could have predicted!

Ezra,

But given the information Geithner had available, it's hard to argue that he should have stopped the bonuses. The AIG retention payments were one-tenth of one percent of the money we've given AIG, much less the rest of the system. Whether Geithner knew of them early or late, he probably didn't consider them a priority. If someone had sat him down and explained that the bonuses would become the flashpoint for populist outrage and imperil the whole of the administration's response to the financial crisis, that might have changed matters. But that sort of thing is hard to predict that in advance...

I don't think I've ever seen Ezra completely misread a political situation as badly as he has this one. The outrage over the bonuses was entirely predictable and obvious. It may not have been obvious to Tim Geithner but I can't believe that David Axelrod or Patrick Gaspard couldn't have foreseen this crisis. Geithner needs a full time political baby-sitter, or better yet a new job.