MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Obama administration confident Geithner will remain in his job

“I haven’t made that decision yet, we’ve got a lot of challenges” said Geithner

President Barack Obama’s senior advisers are confident Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will remain in his job even though he hasn’t made his intentions public, an administration official said.

Geithner met recently with Vice President Joe Biden and laid out his reasons for wanting to leave the post. Biden outlined why it was vital that Geithner remain, said the official considered a reliable source and who spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcement has been made.

A departure by Geithner would represent another blow to an administration that confronts a weak economy, a declining stock market and uncertainty over how it will resolve controversy over the deficit.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said in his daily news briefing that Geithner hasn’t made a decision yet. “He has said he will be here for the foreseeable future,” Carney said, referring to previous public comments by the Treasury secretary. “That’s what he tells us.”

Geithner has been engaged in recent discussions about events such as the Group of Seven meeting in France next month and efforts to overhaul the housing-finance system, another administration official said. Geithner hasn’t been delegating more authority than usual or given any indications that he is planning to leave, the official said.

Geithner, 49, previously signalled to White House officials that he was considering leaving the administration once Obama reached an agreement with Congress to raise the federal debt limit. Obama signed a bill raising the debt limit on Aug. 2.

In an appearance this week on ABC television’s “Good Morning America” program, Geithner said he hadn’t made up his mind.

“I haven’t made that decision yet,” Geithner said. “And, you know, we’ve got a lot of challenges, president’s got a lot of challenges, and, you know, I got other pressures on me, too. But I’ll make that decision at the right moment.”

Geithner said on June 30 that his son would be returning to New York to finish high school, and that “I’m going to be commuting for a while.” Before joining the administration in January 2009, Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a post that put him at the centre of the government’s response to the financial crisis of 2008.