You hurry up! We need more time.

Last week, Barack Obama told us to expect big things from Tim Geithner:

Tomorrow, my treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, will be announcing some very clear and specific plans for how we are going to start loosening up credit once again.

Then nothing. So, what happened?

On Fox News Sunday, David Axelrod protested that the issue is so complicated that the administration needs more time. Yet strangely, when it comes to the stimulus, Obama and Axelrod insisted that a catastrophe was imminent unless the government acted immediately. Here’s how Axelrod put it:

[CHRIS] WALLACE: After the markets dropped 382 points, the Wall Street Journal said, “Geithner’s opening act as rescuer in chief yesterday was a bomb.” And the New York Times said there was no bailout plan and no firm time line for a plan. There were only outlines.

Question: Tim Geithner was appointed almost three months ago. How could he not have answers this week to basic questions like what are you going to do with the toxic assets and how are you going to price them?

[DAVID] AXELROD: Chris, first of all, we should note that this weekend, the secretary’s been in Rome talking to finance ministers from around the world, spent six hours with them.

And they all emerged saying they were impressed with the administration’s approach. It will help shape their thinking. He did a spectacular job for us there. This is a complex problem the likes of which we’ve never dealt with before.

There are — there are issues that are so abstruse, so hard to penetrate, that even the most brilliant of financial analysts are puzzling about how to unravel it.

In contrast, the stimulus was a pretty straightforward thousand-page program.