Cuomo And Geithner Skated

The New York Times, for one, is directing its venom at Wall Street enforcers and regulators like Timothy Geithner and Andrew Cuomo. The paper says the former New York Fed chief and New York attorney general cut a deal in 2008 to go easy on Wall Street firms to focus on "stabilizing world financial markets."

But what they did or didn't do to investigate the mess is not the issue. The real controversy is why they weren't investigated for their own role in the mess. Geithner and Cuomo no doubt worried that if they leaned too hard on bankers, their own guilt in the crisis would be exposed in court showdowns.