By all indications by year end we will be granted a reprieve from listening to Secretary Geithner’s outrageous claims about how the bailouts, largely engineered from his perch as the President of the New York Fed, saved the world from absolute financial Armageddon. To Geithner anyone who disagrees with him has amnesia as this recent WSJ editorial from earlier this month details. In today’s Investor’s Business Daily I give the countervailing narrative (click the link for the full editorial):

“Timothy Geithner is in full "swan song" mode. Word is he will give up his job as secretary of the treasury at the end of 2012, regardless of whether President Obama wins or loses in November.

To influence history's judgment of his tenure as president of the New York Fed and as treasury secretary, he is now aggressively shaping a glowing narrative. This explains his current victory lap in the media highlighting the fourth anniversary of the bailout of Bear Stearns.

He recounts how the CEO of Bear, with his firm on the brink of bankruptcy, came to him looking for a shoulder to cry on. From his then leadership perch as president of the New York Fed, the bank ultimately extended nearly $30 billion for a bailout, the first in a series of such interventions.

Although this effort to shape a narrative has begun, the countervailing narrative is also clear. This narrative couches the bailout of Bear Stearns as the "original sin," the first in a series of short-sighted interventions with negative consequences and highlights that our system is just as vulnerable, if not more vulnerable, to similar crashes in the coming years.”