Obama's Cabinet and Staff

[HuskyCaucasian]

Per CNN:

"President-elect Obama has chosen ex-Senator Tom Daschle to be Health and Human Services secretary"

[HuskyCaucasian]

Also Via CNN:

President-elect Barack Obama has picked Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, to head his Office of Management and Budget, a top Democratic source told CNN Tuesday.

 

Orszag, 39, is an expert on health care, pensions and Social Security policy.

[Balta1701]

I think if you went back far enough you could probably find me predicting that one in February.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Napolitano to head Homelend Security:

Arizona Demcratic Gov. Janet Napolitano has been chosen to serve as secretary of the vast and troubled Department of Homeland Security for President-elect Barack Obama, Democratic officials said. Napolitano is a border governor who will now be responsible for immigration policy and border security, which are part of Homeland Security’s myriad functions.

[NorthSideSox72]

Napolitano to head Homelend Security:

That's an interesting one.

 

I'd imagine, in AZ, she must be a relative moderate. Anyone know her politics, and how effective she has been? What her policies and politics are on border control? I hope she's more in favor of a virtual wall, not the phyisical one.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Also, word is that billionaire Penny Pritzker is the top choice for Commerce Secretary. She has no record in public office, so, I'd like to know more about her too.

 

Same article also mentions that Daschle will not just be HHS Secretary, but also the "health care czar", responsible for the new health care policies they want to enact.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Also, word is that billionaire Penny Pritzker is the top choice for Commerce Secretary. She has no record in public office, so, I'd like to know more about her too.

 

Same article also mentions that Daschle will not just be HHS Secretary, but also the "health care czar", responsible for the new health care policies they want to enact.

Trib article seems to indicate that Pritzker may have some skeletons in her closet on the financial side. Superior Bank, owned at one time by the family, failed in 2001 over accounting irregularities, and they were a major player in the securitization of debts.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Trib article seems to indicate that Pritzker may have some skeletons in her closet on the financial side. Superior Bank, owned at one time by the family, failed in 2001 over accounting irregularities, and they were a major player in the securitization of debts.

Trib now saying that Pritzker turned it down. Nevermind.

 

[Cknolls]

Also, word is that billionaire Penny Pritzker is the top choice for Commerce Secretary. She has no record in public office, so, I'd like to know more about her too.

 

Same article also mentions that Daschle will not just be HHS Secretary, but also the "health care czar", responsible for the new health care policies they want to enact.

 

 

Like how her bank failed. That's good for the resume.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Like how her bank failed. That's good for the resume.

Penny Pritzker: I'm not in the running

Penny Pritzker, in the mix to be President-elect Barack Obama's Commerce Secretary, just sent me an e-mail saying she is not a candidate for the post. Pritzker is a member of the Obama transition operation and chaired his finance committee. Money she helped raise from major donors in the first quarter of the campaign was crucial to establishing Obama as a viable presidential candidate.

 

 

Pritzker said in her e-mail, "Speculation has grown that I am a candidate for Secretary of Commerce. I am not. I think I can best serve our nation in my current capacity: building businesses, creating jobs and working to strengthen our economy. It has been my great privilege to serve in the Obama campaign. I look forward to helping our new President in every way possible and am excited about the future under his leadership." Penny Pritzker, Chair, TransUnion"

[clyons]

Markets up following reports that NY Fed Bank president Timothy Geithner will become Treasury Secretary.

[StrangeSox]

Clinton reportedly accepted Sec. of State offer.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/us/polit...ama.html?ref=us

Edited November 21, 2008 by StrangeSox

[lostfan]

Hillary to accept SecState.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081121/pl_nm/...a_obama_clinton

 

edit: StrangeSox beat me to it

Edited November 21, 2008 by lostfan

[Balta1701]

CNN is running with a denial of that report.

Hillary Clinton is in talks with the Obama transition team, and “reports beyond that are premature,” a Clinton aide says.

[DukeNukeEm]

I believe this all updated.

[lostfan]

Markets up following reports that NY Fed Bank president Timothy Geithner will become Treasury Secretary.

My friend who works at Treasury suggested this a couple weeks back when I floated the Jamie Dimon thing past him. Score one for him.

[HuskyCaucasian]

My friend who works at Treasury suggested this a couple weeks back when I floated the Jamie Dimon thing past him. Score one for him.

it's good to have connections.

[lostfan]

it's good to have connections.

He's leaving there and he wants to give me a new gov't position where he's going a few months from now since he'll have hiring authority. I don't want to leave where I'm at because I love my current job but if they offer me the right pay grade and more money without a bad commute I might have to take him up on that.

[BigSqwert]

Looks like Richardson will be the Commerce Secretary.

[NorthSideSox72]

Looks like Richardson will be the Commerce Secretary.

That would be a good choice. He did a good job bringing in a lot of new businesses and jobs to New Mexico, and pushed for balanced budgets. His foreign policy experience should help as well.

 

As for the NM Gov job, temporarily, the Lt Gov takes over. I don't think that job is up for election for another year or two.

 

[southsider2k5]

Markets up following reports that NY Fed Bank president Timothy Geithner will become Treasury Secretary.

 

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/25/business/25sorkin.php

 

Where was Geithner in turmoil?

By Andrew Ross Sorkin

 

 

President-elect Barack Obama unveiled on Monday an economic team with deep experience handling economic crises. But does the man at the center of this star-studded cast, Timothy Geithner, the nominee for Treasury secretary, have the chops to take the nation in a new financial direction?

 

That is what a number of Wall Street chieftains are quietly asking, even after the stock market surged with relief after his nomination.

 

One reason Obama gave for nominating Geithner was his "unparalleled understanding of our current economic crisis, in all of its depth, complexity and urgency." More important, he suggested, "Tim will waste no time getting up to speed. He will start his first day on the job with a unique insight into the failures of today's markets — and a clear vision of the steps we must take to revive them."

 

Geithner is clearly a 47-year-old wonder boy.

 

A graduate of Dartmouth, he has a master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, did a turn with Henry Kissinger's consulting firm, a stint in the Clinton administration and, for the last five years, has been the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

 

He will effectively lead the team Obama has chosen to mend a crippled economy. That's important because they won't just be debating economic theory — they will be making deals Wall Street-style, negotiating billion-dollar bailouts and restructuring entire industries on behalf of their client, the taxpayers.

 

But Geithner's involvement in several ultimately ill-fated efforts to buttress the American financial system is the very reason some Wall Street CEO's — a number of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of piquing the man who regulates them — question whether he's up to the challenge.

 

"We have only two things to say about Tim Geithner, who we do not know: AIG and Lehman Brothers," said Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. "Throw in the Bear Stearns/Maiden Lane fiasco for good measure," he said, referring to the site of the New York Federal Reserve, where many rescue discussions took place.

 

"All of these 'rescues' are a disaster for the taxpayer, for the financial markets and also for the Federal Reserve System as an organization. Geithner, in our view, deserves retirement, not promotion."

 

Ouch.

 

"He was in the room at every turn of the crisis," said another executive who participated in several such confidential meetings with Geithner. "You can look at that both ways."

 

While Henry Paulson Jr., the current Treasury secretary, has taken a drubbing for the changeable nature of the government's efforts to bolster the financial industry — some of which clearly contradicted each other — Geithner has managed, for the most part, to remain unscathed. He's been widely praised as a bright, articulate out-of-the box thinker who is a bailout expert, to the extent anyone can truly be an expert at fast-changing emergencies.

 

Behind the scenes, Geithner was the point person for weeks of sleep-deprived Bailout Weekends. It was Geithner, not Paulson, for example, who put together the original rescue plan for the American International Group.

 

And, of course, Geithner also oversaw and regulated an entire industry whose decline has delivered a further blow to an already weakened American economy. Under his watch, some of the biggest institutions that were the responsibility of the New York Fed — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and most recently, Citigroup — faltered. While he was one of the first regulators to smartly articulate the potential for an impending disaster, a number of observers question whether he went far enough to stop the calamity.

 

Perhaps what has most people on Wall Street stirring is Geithner's role in the fall of Lehman. At the time of its bankruptcy, he, along with Paulson, appeared to be the most vocal in supporting the government's refusal to bail out the firm, according to people involved in various meetings. With hindsight, many in the financial industry blame a deepening of the global financial crisis on the government's decision to let Lehman crumble.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, there have been moves afoot in recent weeks by some in the New York Fed and Obama team to put distance between Paulson and Geithner, whose salary was $398,200 last year and who will take a pay cut to $191,300 in his new role.

 

These include the suggestion that Geithner was not in league with Paulson over Lehman; that Geithner pressed to save the firm from bankruptcy; that he was a lone voice on the subject and was overruled by Paulson and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, on this issue.

 

The validity of this new claim is hard to verify. The New York Fed declined to comment.

 

Many executives suggest it may be a bit of revisionist history. "If that's true, he did a good job of hiding it," said one executive who spent the weekend at the New York Federal Reserve the weekend of Lehman's fall.

 

Paulson has only praise for Geithner. "I have the highest regard for Tim — his judgment and creativity have been critical to designing and implementing the necessary actions we've taken to protect and strengthen our financial system," he said.

 

Let's hope he's right.

[NorthSideSox72]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/25/business/25sorkin.php

I think this article illustrates nicely the fact that there will be no sterling pick for this job. Anyone with enough experience to be useful will have scars, and anyone without scars will be unprepared.

 

I also think that one specific sentence from the article illustrates both what it is that makes me most confident about Obama's leadership, and also, what he is looking for in his cabinet:

 

He's been widely praised as a bright, articulate out-of-the box thinker who is a bailout expert, to the extent anyone can truly be an expert at fast-changing emergencies.

 

All serious candidates for the Presidency are smart, more so than average certainly - yes, even W. But even among that crowd, Obama stands out. In almost every situation he's been in during his adult life, he has been "the smartest guy in the room". Since you cannot prepare for all things, you need to be that guy, to be effective as President. Obama is that guy, and looking at his cabinet picks so far, he's looking for the same thing in his stable. Its less about ideology, and more about intelligence and thinking/problem solving style.

 

[Balta1701]

All serious candidates for the Presidency are smart, more so than average certainly - yes, even W. But even among that crowd, Obama stands out. In almost every situation he's been in during his adult life, he has been "the smartest guy in the room". Since you cannot prepare for all things, you need to be that guy, to be effective as President. Obama is that guy, and looking at his cabinet picks so far, he's looking for the same thing in his stable. Its less about ideology, and more about intelligence and thinking/problem solving style.

It's not answered in that article, but it would be really, really nice to know that his treasury secretary pick had been one of the 10 or 15% of people who were smart enough to recognize that the housing market was going bubble-crazy and that craziness was what was propping up the economy after the 01/02 recession.

 

I know you can't get everything right. But that one was so easy and missed by so many people out of either greed or silliness that it'd be nice to have a treasury secretary who caught it. Or at least a treasury secretary as smart as me, because I caught it in 04 and was predicting back then that 08 would be a terrible election for the incumbent because the economy would be in the toilet.

[NorthSideSox72]

It's not answered in that article, but it would be really, really nice to know that his treasury secretary pick had been one of the 10 or 15% of people who were smart enough to recognize that the housing market was going bubble-crazy and that craziness was what was propping up the economy after the 01/02 recession.

 

I know you can't get everything right. But that one was so easy and missed by so many people out of either greed or silliness that it'd be nice to have a treasury secretary who caught it. Or at least a treasury secretary as smart as me, because I caught it in 04 and was predicting back then that 08 would be a terrible election for the incumbent because the economy would be in the toilet.

I am sure he was aware of the housing bubble. And the article does state his early awareness and expression of reservation on some issues that turned out to be really bad, when others said nothing.

 

[Balta1701]

I am sure he was aware of the housing bubble. And the article does state his early awareness and expression of reservation on some issues that turned out to be really bad, when others said nothing.

Well, I hope you're right. All I'll say about the phrase "I'm sure he was aware of the housing bubble" is that way too many of the guys in charge, including Greenspan and Bernanke, were denying that there was a housing bubble even as late as 06 or so.