Obama pick Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

Financeroll.com (22/11) -- President-elect Barack Obama picked Timothy Geithner, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to be his Treasury secretary, with Lawrence Summers getting a senior White House role, as released in Bloomberg.
Geithner helped lead the U.S. response to the deepest financial crisis in seven decades, including the takeover of American International Group Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. rescue, and decision to let Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. fail. The U.S. stock market’s benchmark index climbed from an 11-year low after news of Obama’s pick.

Both Geithner and Summers are veterans of managing financial turmoil, working together on the Asian financial crisis of 1997- 98 and staving off a Mexican default earlier that decade. They will be charged with shepherding Obama’s plans for a fiscal stimulus to cushion an economy that analysts say is in its deepest recession in a quarter century.


Summers, Bill Clinton’s last Treasury secretary and now a professor at Harvard University, would have a post that positions him to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as Fed chairman.

Obama is also likely to nominate New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary, and to announce his picks on Nov. 24, the person said on condition of anonymity. Richardson was Clinton’s Energy secretary and former ambassador to the United Nations.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock index jumped 6.3 percent to 800.03 at the close in New York. The gauge is still heading for its biggest annual decline since 1931.(BLB)