Is there anything at all to like about Tim Geithner?

Gordon Brown suffered a rebuff from Washington yesterday after he signalled Britain's backing for plans for an international transactions tax on banks to help the world recover from the financial crisis.

At the G20 summit in St Andrews, Fife, the Prime Minister dropped Britain's longstanding opposition to the scheme, which could raise billions a year for poor nations.

But within hours of the significant shift in UK policy on the so-called "Tobin tax", the US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner dismissed the move, saying Washington was "not prepared" to support it.

The Prime Minister called on the IMF urgently to consider the tax on financial transactions which experts say could raise as much as $600bn (£360bn) a year. Mr Brown said the financial collapse last year showed "there must be a better economic and social contract between financial institutions and the public based on trust and a just distribution of risks and rewards". ... Independent/UK