I know Tim Geithner. I worked for two years in an office three doors down the hall from Tim Geithner. Tim Geithner is a friend of mine. Tim Geithner is no Jack Kennedy--but Jack Kennedy would have made a really lousy Federal Reserve Bank President. By contrast, Tim Geithner should do an excellent and wonderful job as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Posted by DeLong at October 15, 2003 05:07 PM | TrackBackFT.com Home US: IMF policy chief to lead NY Fed | By Alan Beattie in Washington | Published: October 16 2003 0:28 | Last Updated: October 16 2003 0:28
Timothy Geithner, the head of policy at the International Monetary Fund, has been appointed president of the New York Federal Reserve. The appointment, announced on Wednesday by the New York Fed's board of governors, ends a tortuous nine-month search for a replacement for William McDonough, who announced his resignation as president in January and left in June. The president of the New York Fed, the second most senior official in the Fed system, is the central bank's representative on Wall Street and is heavily involved in financial stability issues.
Mr Geithner, comparatively young for the position at 42, rose rapidly after joining the US Treasury in 1988, working on the 1997-8 Asian and Russian financial crises and becoming international under-secretary in 1998. He joined the IMF in 2001 after the change of US administration and is well known among international economics policymakers.
Although coming to prominence under a Democratic administration, few regard Mr Geithner as a particularly partisan figure. He was a career civil servant before being appointed under-secretary, and before joining Treasury worked for the consultancy Kissinger Associates. Former colleagues said that despite his lack of direct experience in financial markets, having spent the bulk of his career in public service, his knowledge of international finance would be highly valuable. The New York Fed often gets dragged into coping with financial crises, such as the bail-out in 1998 of the stricken hedge fund Long Term Capital Management.
Ted Truman, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics and former Treasury colleague of Mr Geithner, said: "He may be young - and he looks younger than he is - but he has packed a huge amount in. He has a very impressive vitae." Mr Geithner has lived in Africa and India and speaks Japanese, having also served at the US embassy in Tokyo.
Business Week notes a lack of "gravitas" (Greek for gray hair and wrinkles). A man of 42, with wide public sector experience and a chance to run a large organization, sit in at and determine the oucome of FOMC meetings, rescue financial damsels and hear regularly from Wall Street and the financial press that he is doing it all wrong - he'll develop gravitas soon enough.
Posted by: K Harris on October 16, 2003 04:06 AM