Don’t look now, but smart people are raising serious questions about the ability of NY Fed chief Tim Geithner to win confirmation to be the next SecTreas. At minimum, the cozy little Goldman alum club is getting some unwelcome pub and Geithner’s rep has taken more than a few knocks. His supposed confusion about his tax liabilities is not, taken at face value, the sort of thing the man who would be handed de facto control of trillions of dollars should admit.

But the alternative is even worse — that he gamed the system to his own benefit, the same way he bailed out his Goldman buddies who had massive exposure in Wall Street’s 21st century gambling den.