Two items today that confirm the diagnosis. First Megan McCardle.

The longer I think about it, the more shocked I am at how badly Treasury has handled this. First, they refused to consult with banks or, apparently, too many Bush administration officials, because they didn't want the plan "tainted" by such seedy associations. Since as far as I can tell these two sources have custody of, to a first approximation, 90% of the information needed to make a plan work, this was moronic. It was a classic technocratic error, thinking that a pure planner should operate without regard to the desires of the grubby, greedy people they're supposed to regulate.

Treasury didn't just fail to deliver a plan; it actively made things worse. At this point, the uncertainty in the markets about the uncertainty of various financial institutions is making it more likely that those institutions will have problem--no one wants to invest in a bank that might be nationalized, and no one wants to deposit substantial funds in a bank that might not. A plan would at least have shown some commitment in a specific direction, even if its details had to be changed at a later date. Right now, Geithner has implicitly left all options on the table.

The only man in the U.S. for the job is a moron.

Then there is the casual incompetence we're seeing from the White House staff.

In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.

Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps.

The moves escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site.

They came to light only because the official paperwork was transmitted to the Federal Register, a dense daily compendium of regulatory actions and other formal notices prepared by the National Archives. They were published there several days after the fact.

A Politico review of Federal Register issuances since Obama took office found three executive orders, one presidential memorandum, one presidential notice, and one proclamation that went unannounced by the White House.

Two of Obama's actions on regulatory reform were spotted by bloggers, lobbying groups and trade publications after they emerged in the Federal Register.

There was no apparent rhyme or reason to the omissions. A proclamation Obama issued on February 2 for African-American History Month was e-mailed to the press and posted on the White House web site. But another presidential proclamation the same day for American Heart Month slipped by.

Such notices were routinely released by the White House press office during prior administrations — making their omission all the more unusual given Obama’s oft-repeated pledges of openness.

Apparently a lot of Obama staff people don't know how to use computers...