Here's How Tim Geithner Can Help The Private Equity Firm He Just Joined

Less than a year after leaving his Treasury Secretary post, Tim Geithner has announced that he's joining private equity firm Warburg Pincus.

As cash-ins go, it's not the most controversial. It would have been much more of an issue if he'd gone to a too big to fail investment bank.

This is not going to be some figurehead part-time job. According to the firm he'll be working every day, reporting to the co-CEOs.

So what's Tim Geithner going to do there? Almost certainly what he brings to the table will be his ability to fundraise. As Treasury Secretary he went all around the world, meeting the most powerful and rich people. All of them are theoretically investors in Warburg Pincus' PE funds now. Furthermore, part of Geithner's job as Treasury Secretary was to make the case for the US (explain why our debt was a good investment, etc.). So really this is the perfect job for him. While it's definitely "monetizing" his years of service to Obama, the fact that he's unlikely to be dealing much with regulatory matters means there will not be many conflict-of-interest situations.

So again, as cash-ins go, this one actually takes advantage of his skills, and is relatively uncontroversial.