On Valiantly Rejecting Monocausal Explanations for a Bad Economy

CNBC's John Carney suggests Timothy Geithner will be fired soon because "the economy is bad":

We're starting a Tim Geithner death watch.

That sounds a bit morbid. So let's be clear. We do not think President Barack Obama will murder Tim Geithner following the devastation of his party in the midterm elections. He'll just toss the guy out of the Treasury Department

There will be heavy pressure from within the Democratic party for the Obama administration to make changes that will both publicly mark a change of direction for the administration and privately send a message to party insiders that the White House is accepting its share of the blame for the loss of the House of Representatives. 

Geithner is a clear candidate to play the fall-guy. In exit polls, six in 10 voters said the economy is the nation's No.1 problem. Around four in 10 believe their family's financial condition got worse since Obama took office. Geithner is the nation's chief economic official. A large share of the blame for last night's results will likely fall on him.

Frankly, these kind of stories make me wish the MSM would be blamed for something and collectively murdered.  And also frankly, it's absurd to think that Geithner - as much as I dislike him both as an economist and as a person - is to blame for any sort of macroeconomic problems.  The President, and any one person in general, is by nature really unable to influence the economy.  The economy is you and me, the decisions we make, and how we allocate our resources.  Blaming Geithner seems absurd and counterproductive.  As a country and as a society, we need to stop turning our eyes to Washington to take responsibility for and to solve all our problems.  It has a poor track record.

When choosing our President, we should vote based on things the President can and does control like wiretapping American citizens, assassinating American citizens, incarcerating American citizens for nonviolent offenses, and bombing shit more than we focus on something that is out of the hands of any one individual, like the amorphous, undefinable real-life MacGuffin that is "the economy, stupid".