November 25, 2008	Tuesday	Ziqa'ad 26, 1429

CHICAGO, Nov 24: President-elect Barack Obama on Monday presented a selection of “the best minds in America” headed by Timothy Geithner as Treasury boss to guide his ambitious plan to revive the stricken US economy.

Recovery would not come overnight but there was no time to lose, Mr Obama said as he moved unusually quickly for a president-elect in announcing his economic lieutenants, including ex-Treasury secretary Larry Summers as director of the powerful National Economic Council.

The president-elect nominated Geithner to take charge of the Treasury and its 700-billion-dollar bailout for troubled financial institutions.

“I’ve sought leaders who could offer both sound judgment and fresh thinking, both a depth of experience and a wealth of bold new ideas and most of all, who share my fundamental belief that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers; that in this country, we rise and fall as one nation, as one people,” the president-elect said.

Geithner, 47, brings up-close experience of the financial crisis having executed the US central bank’s burst of market activity from his perch atop the New York Fed.

Mr Obama made three other administration picks as the Democrat assembled a powerful brains trust to confront the nation’s biggest economic challenge since the Great Depression.

Christina Romer, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is a leading expert on how the nation powered out of the 1930s depression, will chair Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Melody Barnes, a senior campaign adviser who is an expert on healthcare reform, will be director of Obama’s Domestic Policy Council and her deputy will be Heather Higginbottom, who was policy director for his presidential campaign.—AFP