Now Mr. Geithner will have to become the Administration’s chief financial spokesman, so it will be useful for the Senate to sound him out during confirmation hearings.

All the more so because some of his bailout decisions have been less than successful. Mr. Geithner was the driving force behind the government takeover of insurance giant AIG — a “rescue” that has itself twice had to be rescued with more taxpayer capital. The most frustrating part of the AIG episode has been the New York Fed’s lack of transparency, both about the nature of the “systemic risk” that required the takeover and why it was superior to bankruptcy. This is another subject worthy of confirmation scrutiny, not least as an indication of Mr. Geithner’s standards for future interventions.