Obama considers Summers, Geithner for Treasury

By Glenn Somerville and Caren Bohan - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama's short-list for Treasury secretary includes one man with a reputation for being too blunt and another whose genial manner makes some wonder if he is tough enough.

Neither Lawrence Summers' nor Timothy Geithner's expertise is in doubt, but there are questions about who is better suited for the sensitive post with global markets mired in the worst turmoil since the Great Depression.

Summers is tough but possibly too outspoken. Geithner is even-tempered but possibly too nice.

The two are the most often publicly mentioned among several candidates Obama is believed to be considering.

Obama has said he wants to move quickly but deliberately to pick U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's successor to take over early next year.

Summers, 53, and Geithner, 47, are veterans of the Clinton administration who worked together on a series of crises from the Mexican peso devaluation in the mid-1990s to the Asian financial contagion a few years later.

Since Obama's November 4 election victory, markets have waited anxiously for his choice to head a department that has been granted wide powers to try to pull the nation back from the financial brink.

In an interview in September, Obama told Reuters he wanted "somebody with extraordinary credentials who knows the marketplace, knows the players and knows government." He also said the candidate must share his support for a tax code that gives more benefits to the middle class.

Summers and Geithner both command respect on Wall Street and support the broad outlines of Obama's economic philosophy.

Summers, who was Treasury secretary for the final 1-1/2 years of the Clinton administration, has been a senior adviser to Obama for several months and helped guide his response to the financial meltdown.

The intense and blunt-spoken Summers became a full professor at Harvard at 28 and was later president of the university where his abrasive style made many enemies.

His suggestion in 2005 that men had more innate ability in science and engineering than women, together with a series of other missteps, eroded his support among faculty. Summers resigned as Harvard president a year later.

Some women's groups already have expressed reservations about putting Summers back in charge of Treasury.

TOO NICE?

Geithner, who holds the key position of president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, is much milder-mannered. But some financial market participants wonder if he has the necessary steeliness for the job at this crucial time.