Geithner: Obama Won't Ask Me to Stay

Tim Geithner is pretty sure he's going to be joining the ranks of the jobless after the election: The Treasury secretary—the longest serving member of President Obama's economic team—tells Bloomberg that Obama is "not going to ask me to stay on, I’m pretty confident. I’m confident he’ll be president. But I’m also confident he’s going to have the privilege of having another secretary of the Treasury." The White House announced in August that Geithner would stay put through the election, amid Beltway rumblings that he would step down.

This, of course, raises the question of Geithner's successor, and one think tank director dangles two tantalizing possibilities: Erskine Bowles, lately co-chair of the budget deficit commission and a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, and Sen. Kent Conrad, a retiring North Dakota Democrat and "a serious budget hawk on the left." As for Geithner's plans, he says he'll find "something else." (More Timothy Geithner stories.)