Treasury Secretary
The Page lists the following candidates:
Treasury secretary: president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Timothy F. Geithner, former Federal Reserve chief Paul A. Volcker, former Treasury Secretaries Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers.
As the ninth most important person in America, I don’t think this makes much sense. The Fed Chairman is more important than the Treausury Secretary. Volcker’s already been Fed chair and wouldn’t take a less important job. Rubin and Summers have already been Treasury Secretary and wouldn’t want to do the same job again. Geithner would be the logical candidate to succeed Ben Bernanke as Fed Chair (the more important job) in 2010. It’s not going to be any of these people.
Bob Kuttner (the 27th most important person in the country) thinks the job ought to go to current FDIC Chair Sheila Barr (currently the 13th most important person) so it’ll either go to her, or else to Laura D’Andrea Tyson Wonk Room economics blogger Pat Garofalo who’s only the 1,245th most important person in the country but has been rocketing up the charts since graduating from college back in May.
41 Responses to “Treasury Secretary”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 25th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Volcker’s been associated with monetary policy (Fed stuff), and the Treasury is a fiscal policy place, with a crew of politicals running around the upper echelons. I don’t know why Volcker would have any interest in such a thing, nor why anyone who has given it an informed thought would think Volcker might be an appropriate choice. Sarah Palin is only somewhat more implausible.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I disagree. If an Administration wants to pursue change institutions and policies, the Treasury Secretary is much more important than the Fed Chairman. If the Obama Administration undertakes big changes they will come through his Administration, not appointments to the Fed.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
How sure are you that Summers wouldn’t do that job again? He wasn’t at it very long – only about 2 years – left the place in decent shape with a budget surplus and low inflation and has seen nothing but the Bush Administration come in and wreck the place, to borrow a turn of phrase.
He’s also been speaking quite a bit, both in speeches and in his columns in the Financial Times, about the prescriptive changes he believes must be made to get out of this mess. Are we to believe that the only still-viable member of the “Committee to Save the World” wouldn’t want another few years at the helm?
I don’t think we can rule Summers out quite yet.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
The FRB didn’t ask tough questions about what people were doing with all the (sl)easy credit they stupidly created during the last decade.
How about a Fed critic, someone who predicted this crisis and tried to warn people, like Nouriel Roubini or Bill Fleckenstein? Of course people like them have the independence of mind to question establishment thinking, so you know they won’t get the job. It’s the American way.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I have no clue why you think Bernanke won’t be reappointed in 2010. That said the President of the New York Bank has about as much power as Treasury Secretary with none of the direct political obligations.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I’m wondering if the fact that we now need somebody to face down the financial crisis from hell would attract people who feel that they can save America.
Also, there’s need for some experienced hand to come on and restore confidence in the world’s financial markets. Rubin could do that, because he commanded massive respect on Wall Street back in his time at Treasury.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I think Treasury will be more important than the Fed in coming years — there’s going to be a need for a lot of fiscal cleverness in the coming days. What about Peter Orzsag, current head of CBO, for Sec Treasury? I agree with Rob that Bernanke is likely to be reappointed unless something really untoward happens.
October 25th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I think the idea that Summers would take it is because he was SecTreas during the endgame, and thus didn’t really get a chance to do anything. However I don’t see how you nominate him after women-cant-do-science-gate (even if that’s not what he said), picking on Cornel West (who sort of should have been picked on), etc.
I also think either Tyson or Blair would be good choices. Volcker seems like a terrible choice for the moment, but who knows.
October 25th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I wouldn’t rule out Jamie Dimon, although I’m not sure he’d accept.
October 25th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Neil:
Rubin helped lead Citibank into disaster. Why would we want someone who, like Paulson, seems intent on ripping off the taxpayers?
October 25th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Calvin, Citibank’s current disaster is a lot better than a lot of other people’s.
Rubin controlled the dollar/yen exchange rate really well as Treasury Secretary, and that requires the kind of understanding of how your actions affect markets that someone in SecTreas needs to have.
October 25th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I agree that experience and access like that of Rubin or the other Wall Street players mentioned are important, but I think the idea that the Secretary is the one controlling, managing or transacting the dollar/yen exchange rate is a bit far fetched. Treasury is a big place (as is any other department).
October 25th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Ugh, that list is disgusting. How about someone who wasn’t on board with the YEARS AND YEARS OF DISASTROUS ECONOMIC POLICY??
October 25th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Treasury Secretary is now the second most important job in the world. The Fed has screwed things up and the baton has been passed. The Feds balance sheet is now stuffed to the gills with crap. They are running out of bullets.
The Treasury is borrowing hundreds of billions and giving it to the Fed to manage some of the bailouts. The Fed being the junior partner.
Paulson own $700B bailout is getting real ugly real fast. The money is being used and will continue to be used for takeovers. Restructuring the banking system on our dime.
Obama can’t get a hold of the Treasury soon enough. If he puts another Wall Streeter in there, Rubin, we are screwed. Well we probably are anyway.
If by some miracle Volker is offered the Trreasury job and takes it I hope he gets a food tester. There are hundreds of billions of dollars flying around without any oversight. None, nada, zilch. Paulson lies ever time he opens his mouth.
October 25th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I understand that Stan O’Neal and Dick Fuld are available. I’d even bet that Fuld would pay big time for the job to get a chance to to fuck Goldman the way the Goldies at Treasury have fucked Lehman. Or for that matter, the way that Fuld himself fucked Lehman. I sense that this could be wonderful fodder for a soap opera, though the guys are all too old and ugly to make really good TV.
October 25th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Unless you approach the analysis of this stuff as a forensic exercise you won’t ever understand it. Crimes have been committed, and are being committed.
This is Obama’s first test. If he as I expect hands it all off to the crooks then nothing else will matter.
Bernanke is out of his depth by several orders of magnitude. Anyone who could have taken the Fed job would be. The Feds day is done.
All the talk of the socialization of the banking and financial system misses the mark. The Treasury is being privatized by the banking system. Taxpayers will supply the capital and in return get the damaged assets and as much of the losses as possible. This executive, the Bush administration, is mostly oblivious at the top, and deeply complicit down below. The congress is mostly ignorant but in any case powerless.
It will take understanding, nerve, and raw power to reverse this process which is really the annihilation of the market system as we know it. Replacing it with many of the elements of German and Italian State Socialism of the 1930’s.
October 25th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
It’s not going to be Tyson or Orszag. At this point and time, they’re going to want someone with Wall Street-type experience.
And why wouldn’t Rubin, Summers or Volcker want to to it again. The argument that they’ve done it before doesn’t hold water. It’s the opportunity cost: what else could they be doing?
That said, I’m betting it’s Geithner. Even if Geithner wanted to be Fed chairman, there’s nothing to prevent him from moving to the Fed in 2010. Also, I think Bernanke will get reappointed, and then Geithner could perhaps be Fed chairman later.
FYI: I know four of the people mentioned above, although not at all well.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I’m for Alan Blinder. He seems to have the experience, knowledge, judgment, and temperament.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Sheila Bair. Not Barr, Bair.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
If your a Democrat and think Rubin is a credible much less a desirable candidate then……….. well, I hesitate to say. It was Rubin who institutionalized the Wall Street paradigm of unlimited credit growth and wildcat finance that has brought us to this. Now his successor, at GS and now Treasury, is in the process of privatizing the Treasury itself. Putting some snot nosed little 35 year old corporate yes man, head shaved to look like da boss, ‘in charge’ of the bailout. Not a professional public servant in sight.
The supine congress approving him without question. We are so f.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Matt needs to work on the grammar as well as the spelling.
“As the ninth most important person in America, I don’t think this makes much sense.”
I don’t think he really thinks he’s the ninth most important person in America.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
They ought to consider Alice Rivlin. She’s no youngster — but experience and wisdom are very much needed these days. And there’s no law saying she has to serve two terms.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
How often have academics been Sec of Treasury? Blinder has Fed experience, and there’s the Summers example. Brad Delong was in the Clinton Treasury. Is Kenneth Rogoff too republican — he knows international stuff and has experience in IMF/World Bank
October 25th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
There is a HUGE difference between the Treasury Secretary’s role pre-collapse and what the role will be in the next administration. At the very least, the prestige of the job is likely to rise, and the historical importance of the next Treas. Secy is going to be much greater in comparison to most of the former occupants of the office over the last 200 years. And over the next 4 years, I expect that a whole hell of a lot of major global decisions will be made by the “finance ministers,” almost to the point where I see the role potentially being, for awhile, more important than SecDef in terms of shaping how the globe turns.
October 25th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
JR, I think you may be referring to changed perceptions or attention as much as changes in significance or actual importance. In the next few years things will be unusually fragile, of course.
October 25th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Obama conspicuously didn’t rule out Tom Brokaw at the second debate. That’s not the change we need!
Seriously, though, it’s going to be a conservative Wall Street type. The Treasury post is always held by a conservative Wall Street type. Who was the last Secretary that wasn’t?
But, as long as we’re playing no-chance-of-happening fantasy baseball, my pick for Treasury would be Jeffrey Garten. He has enough experience in the financial sector, government, and academia to assure the ignoramuses on the WaPo editorial page about his “seriousness” credentials. At the same time, a lot of these op-ed pieces Garten was writing during the late ’90s, like “Too Big to Fail” or “Mega-Mergers, Mega-Influence“, look pretty good in retrospect.
October 25th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Re Summers, let us not forget that Don Rumsfeld had previously served as Defense secretary and was willing to come back and do it again. Second, we have proof that being Treasury secretary is more important than being Fed chairman. In 1979, G. William Miller was chairman of the Fed and left that position to become Treasury secretary.
October 25th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
What about Howard Dean?
At the moment I think the job requires a politician with national stature, who has actually run in elections, understands finance, but has few Wall Street ties or complicity in the policies that led to the disaster.
October 25th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Why not Barney Frank? He is the go-to guy in Congress on financial and fiscal policy, he’s widely respected on both sides of the aisle, and he has a great feel for the art of the possible. There is no shortage of outstanding policy people, but we need someone with a deep grasp of both policy and politics. A willingness to kick ass when necessary it also a plus.
October 25th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
The Fed chairman WAS more important than the Treasury secretary.
I’m hoping this list isn’t credible, because I don’t see guys like Jamie Dimon on here.
October 25th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Paul Gottlieb, you cannot be serious. If Barney Frank was Treasury Secretary I would short the S&P for the next four years.
Look, I’m a liberal and an Obama supporter since early 2004 (from Chicago). But Barney Frank is far from qualified to be Treasury Secretary. There is not a single member of Congress qualified for the job. Period.
October 25th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I appreciate all the people who are saying that the nominee needs to “not have Wall Street ties”, but do you realize how silly that is? You can’t have a Treasury Secretary with no experience in finance. The people with experience in finance and the banking system… work on Wall Street.
You can hire an “untainted” academic for the Fed, but not Treasury.
October 25th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
everyone here in New Jersey is convinced Governor Corzine is the next Treasury secretary. Having Corzine replace the guy that ousted him as Goldman CEO would be kind of poetic.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Matt, your reasoning is flawed. The Treasury Secretary, as we have seen over the past few months, is not the ninth-most important person in America. For some time in September, Paulson was (far) more important than Bush.
It depends on the president. Certainly, I’d expect Obama (if elected) to lean on his Treasury Sec quite a bit. That makes the position VERY important, and even if the listed guys have held the position before, they will look at the past few months as an example and perhaps consider the wider breadth of power they may be entitled to this time around.
October 26th, 2008 at 9:59 am
It would be a short-term appointment. From the original NY Times story (my emphasis):
October 27th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Why not Krugman for Treasury Secretary? I haven’t seen this discussed yet, and am still not sure why it’s not a good idea. But maybe there’s something wicked obvious?
December 8th, 2008 at 5:51 am
(RTTNews) – The value of the controversial $700 billion financial rescue program has