Maybe Lew will have some interesting thoughts. Maybe he decided some years back that scrawling a series of O’s is, when you sign a lot of things, one way to save time. Maybe his signature started out as a way of subtly spoofing the institution in which he’s spent his life, government, which some think tends to be staffed by a bunch of zeros. Maybe the signature is Proustian: Those cupcakes were his Madeleine, and replicating the squiggles makes him happy. Maybe he is a little eccentric, or a little hidden—if you didn’t want people to think they can read Jack Lew, you could start with having them not be able to read Jack Lew’s signature.

There is the practical question: Is he going to scribble those O’s on the dollar bill when he is Treasury Secretary? Or is he going to give us a new Jack Lew signature that looks like it’s saying something like Jack Lew?

He should do that. Half of America thinks the country is broke, with only zeros in its bank account. Why have something that reminds people of that fear, or seems to underscore it, on your currency? From this high-spending government it may seem like a taunt. Or an admission.