US Not many nominees for Treasury secretary have been asked to specify exactly which software programme they used to file their taxes. (Answer: the widely used TurboTax application.) But for Republicans on the Senate finance committee, the $34,000-plus (€26,000, £25,000) in personal taxes that Tim Geithner failed to pay on time appeared almost as important as the $800bn-plus in new tax cuts and spending that the administration of Barack Obama is likely to unleash on the US economy.
Mr Geithner’s appearance in front of the committee on Wednesday was the kind of self-abasing mixture of conciliation and contrition that generally goes down well in the Senate. Preceded by Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who was brought on as a heavyweight character witness for Mr Geithner’s nomination, Mr Geithner said: “These were careless mistakes. They were avoidable mistakes. But they were unintentional.”
