During Mr. Geithner’s five year tenure as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank his relationships with executives of Wall Street’s giant financial institutions became very close, which has resulted in much questioning of his actions which have favored the industry’s interests and desires.

Are Mr. Geithner’s critics right in saying that he has been motivated solely by a wish to help the financial industry, and is doing it at taxpayer expense? Did he miss too many signs, these last few years, that the financial system was falling apart?

You will be most enlightened by Mr. Becker and Ms. Morgenson’s most revealing and well researched background story in Monday’s Times.

At the heart of the proposal is a plan to expand the new Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, to start the Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets — a partnership to acquire the bad loans. TALF would buy the loans from banks and then bundle them into privately administered investment funds that would be partially guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.