Pragmatist Timothy Geithner Named Treasury Head
Treasury Secretary Choice Signals Dramatic Switch from Bush Era
Nov 25, 2008
Perhaps one of Obama’s first changes will be the headset he uses to govern. Already there are indications he will “hit the ground running” with a team of pragmatists when he assumes the presidency on Jan. 20.
Geithner’s practical experience, though impressive by its indication of hands-on experience in formulating the nation’s monetary policy, extends to the global arena. This expertise in the international monetary realm may be more important now than it has been for any former U. S. Treasury Secretary.
Economy Gone Astray Has Global Repercussions
We live in an era when having the U. S. economy go astray has almost immediate international repercussions. This impact is coming as a hard-learned lesson. Perhaps equally important is the fact that China holds the greatest share of U. S. indebtedness and what bearing this could have on the emergence of China as the world’s next superpower.
The Bush ideologues looked at everything through a special—and sometimes extremely narrow—lens of conservatism. Men such as President Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld operated more from a conservative stance than from a problem-solving headset.
This clouded their awareness of impending disasters in such arenas as the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the natural consequences of letting tens of thousands of Americans be able to buy home mortgages with variable interest loans when rates were so low, and the full negative impact of having so many jobs in the United States outsourced overseas.
The Geithner Portfolio
Geithner (pronounced Gite-ner), a Dartmouth grad, joined the Department of the Treasury in 1988 and worked there in three administrations for five Secretaries of the Treasury, finishing up as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs.
Between 2001 and 2003, Geithner further amplified his expertise by taking over policy review and development at the International Monetary Fund.
His credentials portfolio got its finishing touches after he was named chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in late 2003. This double pronged post cast him as vice chairman and permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, a group responsible for formulating the nation’s monetary policy.
Geithner's Seat-of-the-Pants Experience
By now, Geithner should know from seat-of-the-pants experience the difference between what gets tweaked, and what gets discarded and replaced, as the United States starts down the long, twisted road toward solvency.
Geithner’s studies have been in government, East Asian affairs and international economics, his graduate work being done at Johns Hopkins. He and wife Carole Sonnenfeld come from intellectual families.
Parting thoughts on the hoped-for Obama change in headset around governing:
- Can we now turn the word “intellectual” from an insult rubbed in by Sarah Palin back to what it meant in the pre-Bush era?
- Will the Obama administration leaders deal with hard realities instead of making the mistake of thinking they create and control reality? (New Yorker prize-winning writer Seymour Hersh was told by the Bush Administration that “We create reality.” No wonder the extended Iraq war and collapsed economies were beyond their comprehension.)
SOURCE: Biographical details from the Federal Reserve website.
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