Show Me The Money!

Who will be the next Secretary of Treasury?

Again, this discussion is based on the assumption that Obama will win the presidency.

The chattering classes are batting many names around, but two seem to stand out amid all that noise: Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner.

Summers, 53, was appointed secretary of the treasury by Bill Clinton in 1999, and continued on in that job for the remainder of the Clinton presidency. He went on to become president of Harvard, a position from which he resigned in 2006, in part because of the furor over remarks on his part regarding women in the sciences.

Presidents rarely appoint someone to the same Cabinet post he or she held in the past. Apparently, there is a been-there-done-that feeling for all parties involved.

But it would not be unprecedented. George W. Bush, in 2001, appointed Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, a job he had held a quarter-century earlier, in the Ford Administration. That gave Rumsfeld the distinction of being both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense in history.

Geithner, 47, is president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. He was an under secretary of the treasury for both Summers, and his predecessor Bob Rubin. Geithner has received much publicity, mostly favorable, for his role in the recent bailouts of several financial institutions.

Here is a New York Times article about Geithner, from 20 months ago, before the credit crisis erupted. There is some interesting foreshadowing of subsequent events.

Those seem to be the best bets, although several other plausible names have been discussed.

Two candidates who are active in the financial world are Warren Buffett, and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

One former Wall Streeter is New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Laura Tyson, a professor at Cal Berkeley, was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and, later, director of the National Economic Council, in the Clinton Administration.

Buffett's name is, of course, the most intriguing on that list. That seems unlikely, but I don't know that it can be ruled out. He is a Democrat, and has been a strong Obama supporter.