Why Geithner and Summers Represent Change at Treasury

Tim Geithner and Larry Summers were the top two candidates for Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, and today at noon ET we will officially hear that both are joining Obama's economic team. Geithner will head up the Treasury Department and Summers will be director of the National Economic Council. Having both of these men, rather than having to choose only one, seems to be a great idea and should bode well for future economic policy.

In what might prove to be an important development, we are not installing a CEO into the Treasury Secretary slot. President Bush's record nominating people for this post has not been very impressive, as two of his former Treasury Secretaries were forced to resign, and the jury is still out Paulson's effectiveness thus far. What did those three men have in common? They were all corporate CEOs before heading to Washington.

Paul O'Neill was CEO of Alcoa (AA) for 13 years before he left for the public sector. He resigned after 2 years and was replaced by John Snow, who had been CEO of CSX (CSX) for 15 years. Paulson came along in 2006 after running Goldman Sachs (GS) for 9 years. Obviously being a CEO should not exclude you from consideration for the top job at Treasury, but I think it will be interesting to see if it proves to not be the best resume for the job.

Full Disclosure: No position in AA, CSX, or GS at the time of writing, but positions may change at any time