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Obama Treasury Secretary a most important pick
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Robert Rubin (not interested in the job), Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Paul Volker, Laura Tyson? Whoever it is, it will be a very important choice. The Secretary of the Treasury is one of the top two or three jobs in any President’s administration – up there with the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State.
The current financial crisis and the bailout rescue plan and the looming recession make the position all the more crucial this time around. The Treasury Secretary will be the most important and most powerful member of Obama’s economic team, which will include the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, the Director of the National Economic Council, and the U.S. Trade Representative.
Of course, we must not forget Ben Bernanke, who as head of the Federal Reserve is a power in economic policy making. Bernanke is only two years into a four year term as Federal Reserve chairman and a 14 year term on the Fed Board of Governors. So he will remain in that key economic policy position.
While the Secretary of Treasury can be a power in a presidential administration, it isn’t a foregone conclusion. Some have been ineffectual and weak, witness Paul O’Neil and John Snow under G.W. Bush.
Alexander Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury, and he was influential in shaping the course of George Washington’s governance, and in the process, the structure of the emerging American government. Hamilton may have been able to become one of our early presidents after Washington and Adams if his affair with a married woman had not been exposed. Hamilton was killed in a duel with Jefferson’s Vice President Aaron Burr.
Andrew Mellon, another famous Secretary of the Treasury – 1921 to 1932, helped bring on the Great Depression by his advice to President Hebert Hoover to cut spending and raise taxes during an economic downturn. More recently, John Connally and George Schultz, under Richard Nixon; and James Baker under Ronald Reagan, were influential Secretaries of Treasury.
I don’t know who the best pick for Obama will be. Larry Summers has been described as brilliant, but he has never been described as being diplomatic. I once worked with Summers, very briefly while I was an economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. He came over to Labor looking for ideas on how to combat an economic downturn at the time. We were both very young then. Even then we knew that Summers was destined to rise to the top of the economic profession. How could he miss? Not only smart, Summers is the son of two economists – both professors at the University of Pennsylvania – as well as the nephew of two Nobel laureates in economics: Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow. That’s about as close to being royalty in the economics profession as you can get.
Robert Rubin had a good long run at the top of Treasury under Bill Clinton so why do a rerun there? And he has said he doesn’t want the job. And besides, Rubin resided over the troubles and demise of Citigroup.
Laura Tyson would seem to lack Wall Street heft with little experience in capital and financial markets.
Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, is the guy who wrung inflation out of the U.S. economy by running up unemployment rates above ten percent in the 1980s.
Tim Geithner served under Robert Rubin and Larry Summers when both were at Treasury under Bill Clinton. Now Geithner is head of the New York Federal Reserve, itself a very important economic post. Obama may want to keep him there.
Hey, what about Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, an early supporter of the Obama presidential run? Nah.. Too liberal. And like Tyson, no real heft on Wall Street or experience in capital and financial markets.
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- Social Security History Page
- Social Security Online
- Different Approaches for Dealing With Social Security - Edward Gramlich
- Saving Social Security - Diamond, Peter A. and Peter R. Orszag.
- Structural Reform of Social Security - Martin Feldstein
- Social Security Trustees Report _ 2008
- Social Security Programs Throughout the World: Europe, 2002
