Latest Obama cabinet leak: Fed's Timothy Geithner to head Treasury

Boy, watching this Barack Obama cabinet-appointment-by-trial-balloon business is like manning a leaking levee in New Orleans.

The Obama campaign was famous for being relatively leak-proof, except when it was intentional, such as keeping a lid on how seriously Hillary Clinton was being considered for the vice presidency. But that tight-knit, battle-savvy group is fast learning that with all the consulting and FBI vetting and interviewing going on, it's much harder to keep a secret.

The latest leak is Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (on the left in photo on the right), to head the Treasury Department. Stocks rallied. So far, no reports of any illegal immigrant nannies have surfaced.

So maybe "that one's" right. (That's Fed chairman Ben Bernanke on the right in the photo on the right.)

See new news video below.

I'm also hearing that since Hyatt's Penny Pritzker's balloon got shot down over her failed bank's subprime loan business, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is going to the Commerce Department, which would be a smaller stage than the global one he likes to wander. But it would get him back to Washington.

Our blogging pal Frank James over at the Swamp has more on the Geithner business and why it isn't Lawrence Summers.

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee opined that "Barack Obama's cabinet is starting to resemble a Clinton reunion" and "voters demanded change but so far Obama is only offering more of the same."

What do you think?

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Mark Lennihan / Associated Press

Comments

[eq]

What do I think? I think Obama is blowing it with independent voters. This is not change. It's the same *goddam* cronyism with the same recycled faces as the petty Democratic party of the 1990s that reviled so many Americans. Oh, and I voted for Obama.

The Geithner post is pathetic. The Fed caused this crisis and Geithner is Bernanke's lackey and got his job because of political ties. We need an outsider from the business community to act as a counterweight to the Fed's incompetence. Roosevelt....Obama is not.

He had better be Jesus Christ because he has worn out any good will with this independent and he hasn't even taken office.

[Bruce Temkin]

In my blog (Customer Experience Matters), I make the case for President-Elect Obama to create a new position called Citizen Experience Officer. By applying best practices from large-scale change in the private sector, the person in this new position could dramatically improve the citizen-centricity of the federal government.