Who is Tim Geithner?

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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March 07, 2010

Who is Tim Geithner?

Josh Green has a wonderful profile of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner which explores his role as architect of the plan to rescue the American financial system and President Obama's point man to fix the economy.

"The antithetical reactions to Geithner -- agent of socialism or lapdog of Wall Street -- stem partly from how little is known about him. He lacks the fully realized public persona most government officials develop by the time they're chosen for important Cabinet positions. He doesn't look like a Treasury secretary. He lacks presence. He's trim and small, practically elfin, and, at 48, young for the job (he looks even younger). He doesn't fit the Treasury secretary's typical profile, either, since he is neither a businessman nor an economist nor a party eminence serving out a comfortable valedictory. Geithner is something else entirely -- a superstar of the bureaucracy, whose rapid rise during the 1990s came in the Treasury Department he now runs. At heart, he's an institutionalist."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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March 07, 2010