Treasury island: Geithner's lost crew [View All]

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If President Barack Obama wants to boost confidence in his economic recovery plan, he’s going to have to assure the markets that there isn’t just one guy working on it.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is trying to stabilize the nation’s banking industry, implement a housing rescue plan and prop up a plunging stock market – all with about 18 vacant senior positions, virtually the entire upper echelon of his department.

The staff is so faceless that lobbyists have begun trading jokes about a “ghost” bureaucracy, given the many empty picture frames hanging on the department’s walls.

Administration officials told POLITICO they will soon submit to the Senate a slate of candidates for the posts, including replacements for two who bowed out Thursday, one of whom was Geithner’s pick for his top deputy.

Most of the people who have been tapped to fill the top positions are already working in the building; they just don’t have their titles, their offices and their portraits yet.

But without those particulars, Geithner’s quiet colleagues can’t publicly represent the administration, robbing Obama of the opportunity to work multiple media outlets to pitch the program or to flood Capitol Hill with a show of force – and action – that could impress lawmakers, investors and the public.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19723.html