Another safe pick as bank boss becomes Obama’s Treasury Sec

Timothy Geithner, the New York Federal Reserve Bank chairman, is to be confirmed today as Barack Obama's choice for Treasury Secretary. The decision ends weeks of speculation over who the incoming President would charge with reviving America's failing economy. Previous front-runner Larry Summers, who served as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, will act as a director of the National Economic Council. The rest of Obama's treasury team will be announced later today.

Wall Street immediately surged by 500 points on hearing that Geither would soon be in charge of the US economy. However, The Economist was quick to warn that Geithner "brings no magical solution to the financial crisis... He has been battling it for over a year, with no end in sight." The financial sector is happy though, believing Geithner to be a sensible and non-political choice as Hank Paulson's successor. "He represents competence," says The Economist, noting that Geithner "is suspicious of ideology, questions received wisdom, likes a competition of ideas and is keenly aware of how uncertain the world is".

According to a long profile by Noam Schiber for the New Republic, the 1990s would have been much more economically unstable without Geithner's good humour, light touch and respect on Wall Street. And Schiber reckons that Geithner's "even-keeled presence and conciliatory style - his Obama-like qualities, in other words - could prove a tonic for our financial angst".

For most economic experts, Obama is making the right moves though the appointments so far do pose some questions. Either this is a retreat to the deregulatory Clintonites who helped American into this mess in the first place or it is a "very shrewdly named team of technically competent centrists," says co-founder of American Prospect magazine Robert Kuttner on the Huffington Post. However, the big decisions are yet to be made and concern company bail-outs and fiscal stimulus packages rather than White House personnel. Kuttner concludes that it would also be nice to see someone in the economics team who was a bit more radical.

Michael Tomasky, writing for the Guardian, would like see a radical anywhere in the Obama cabinet. The nine major positions announced so far are a "really strong" list, he says. "But I do note that there's not yet one roaring liberal tiger in the bunch."

He is not the only one disappointed. "This is the guy Republicans called a socialist, maybe a Marxist, and National Journal said was the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate?" recalls Salon's Mike Madden in disbelief. But Obama is doing what he said he would do in between the 'hope' and 'change' rhetoric: compiling a cabinet that is "pragmatic, consensus-oriented and interested in getting things done".

Of all the appointments so far, it is still the much-leaked but still to be confirmed choice of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State that most riles influential right-wing columnist Dick Morris. "This appointment represents the capstone of betrayal of Obama's promise to be the 'change we can believe in'," he says, describing the pick as hypocritical and "breathtakingly cynical". Morris adds: "His promise of change has proven so bankrupt that maybe the rest of his candidacy is too."

FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 24, 2008