UPDATE 2-Geithner to be tapped for U.S. Treasury - reports

(adds details, quotes, updates market reaction)

WASHINGTON, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Timothy Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and a time-tested crisis manager, is expected to be tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to head the U.S. Treasury, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

NBC News said Obama was expected to announced his economic team on Monday in an effort to calm markets, and share prices jumped on the report with the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 500 index .SPX closing up 6.3 percent.

Geithner was considered a top prospect along with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers for the post, which is in the forefront of efforts to tamp down the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

"A fantastic choice to help lead the financial markets out of the wilderness," Chris Rupkey, a senior economist at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York, said in a note to clients. "He is battle-tested, a crisis manager par excellence who will hit the ground running."

Geithner, 47, would bring a dash of relatively youthful vigor to the job and have the advantage of being able to take up the reins swiftly because of his past service in Washington, including at other times when markets were under stress and needed help.

He would succeed U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, with whom he has been working hand-in-glove for months while dealing with a crisis that continues to wrack financial markets worldwide.

"This is an excellent choice. He knows where all the bones are buried on Wall Street," said Tom Sowanick, chief investment officer at Clearbrook Financial LLC in Princeton, New Jersey.

Geithner already has a lengthy stint at Treasury under his belt. He joined the department in 1988 and worked his way up to under secretary for international affairs during the Clinton administration under former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Summers, who succeeded Rubin as Treasury chief.

As stocks shot up, the dollar hit its high for the day against Japanese yen, and prices for U.S. Treasury debt, already trading down, edged lower.

Treasury is a key post in any administration, but that is especially true now with a crisis that is hurting everyone from pensioners to Wall Street titans as their wealth melts away.

Spokesman for both the New York Fed and the Fed board in Washington declined to comment on the reports.

Geithner's current job is also a highly sensitive one, since the New York Fed is at the nexus of dealings between Wall Street and policy-makers at both the Treasury and central bank.

The head of the New York Fed also carries a permanent vote on the Fed's interest rate-setting committee, which would make the selection of any successor to Geithner at the Fed also of great interest to financial markets.

Citing unnamed sources, NBC said Summers might still play a big role in Obama's administration. It also reported that New Mexico Governor and former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson -- an early supporter of Obama -- will be nominated to head the Commerce Department.

Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, a top adviser to Obama during the campaign who had been seen as a long-shot for the Treasury job, is expected to continue to play an advisory role, NBC said. (Reporting by Glenn Somerville)