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21 Nov 2008 08:19 pm

Geithner, Treasury Secretary

Justin Fox:

One thing Geithner doesn't have much background in is economic policy other than financial policy (at Treasury his big job was jetting around the world fighting the emerging markets financial crises of the late 1990s). So the other names on the economic team that Obama is set to announce Monday are going to be important. They're likely to be the ones designing a stimulus package while Geithner spends his days trying to make the banking system work again.

James Surowiecki:

The Geithner appointment doesn't solve the interregnum problem, obviously. But it does reassure Wall Street that a smart, capable person -- who isn't Hank Paulson -- will be running Treasury, and that Obama is serious about bringing real stability to the markets. Obama is supposedly going to introduce his entire economic team next week, and that will also be good for the markets, since it'll give him a chance to lay out, even if only in broad strokes, what he plans to do as soon as he takes office. Two months is too long, but markets are forward-looking, and if people get the sense that real change (major fiscal stimulus, spending the rest of the TARP, saving the automakers, and so on) will be implemented in January, it could create a sense of optimism, however fleeting.

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