Treasury secretary and tax cheat extraordinaire Timothy Geithner is in over his head. And considering that he is, again, a tax cheat pretty much everything he says and does is a joke. Think back to the statement where he said that legislation is being proposed to limit tax evasion. Tim Geithner has become a White House laughingstock, and Obama knows it.

So could the whisperings of dumping Geithner be true?

A friend reports chatter within the Obama administration that Tim Geithner was a bad choice for Treasury Secretary and that Quadrangle partner Steve Rattner (currently the car czar) was brought in partly to have a good relief pitcher on hand.

This doesn’t surprise us: We think that, in this crisis, Tim Geithner is clearly the wrong man for the job. But this is also only unconfirmed chatter at this point.

Would Steve Rattner be a better Treasury Secretary than Tim Geithner? Our immediate reaction is yes. Steve has worked on multiple sides of the fence–as a journalist, banker, and investor–and he has a lot more experience than Tim does.

Is he too close to Wall Street? Possibly. But Wall Street experience isn’t bad in this case: Knowing how the game works and what the special interests are is good. The key is to not have that as your only frame of reference–as, in our opinion, both Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner do.

Interesting thought, isn’t it? Amazing that it never occured to Obama earlier that perhaps a tax evader would not the best person to head the U.S. Treasury.

Great decisions like these show how nice it is to know that we’ve got such an intelligent, experienced President.