Our junior senator, Maria Cantwell, was apparently not too impressed with President Barack Obama’s choice to be Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. The New York Times

here reports the following exchange during his confirmation hearings:”Innovation got ahead of risk management and restraint and prudence.” That’s how Mr. Geithner summed up the problems that sprang from credit default swaps, a subject that Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, has raised more than once today. Ms. Cantwell pressed him on how financial regulators would prevent Wall Street’s next innovation from wreaking havoc in the markets, and didn’t seem too satisfied when he answered in fairly general terms.Let’s see, when a professional economist, former investment banker, and officer of the Federal Reserve Bank answers a senator with a single undergraduate degree from Miami of Ohio in general terms, is he ducking the question, or politely trying not to confuse her with talk of collateralized debt obligations and other complex financial derivitives? And also: All the senators at the hearing make a custom of posing long, windy, self-aggrandizing questions, leaving the noniminee little time to respond. Specifics would take hours. But this way, Cantwell gets to roll her eyes and look tough on C-SPAN.