Another Treasury Pick Withdraws From Consideration

Treasury Secretary must be one lonely man at the Treasury Department considering that President Obama has still to nominate, and the Senate confirm, the picks needed to fully staff the Department during this economic crisis.

Yet another Treasury Department pick has chosen to withdraw, which means that a Bush Administration appointee will remain on the job for a while longer:

Frank Brosens, a hedge fund manager who was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s choice to run the office overseeing the $700 billion bank bailout program, withdrew his name from consideration.

Brosens, a founding partner of Taconic Capital Advisors LLC in New York, confirmed in an e-mail he is no longer in the running for the job, which requires Senate confirmation. The position is currently held by Neel Kashkari, a holdover from the Bush administration.

Geithner has had a difficult time filling vacancies and remains President Barack Obama’s only confirmed appointment at the department as the administration grapples with the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. At a congressional hearing yesterday, the Treasury chief said that hiring isn’t easy.

“We’re finding a lot of people willing to come serve their country at this moment of challenge, and I think that’s very encouraging,” Geithner told the House Financial Services Committee. “We’re going to need some more people, though, and we’re working very hard to bring in enough talent to help us get through this.”

If they're finding so many people willing to serve, how come so few positions have been filled? That's the question of the day.

Is it the vetting process that is still dysfunctional? Is it the people that are being chosen? Why did Brosens opt out of the process? Is it because he's too closely tied to the hedge funds and the investment business that populists in Congress have directed their ire at?

For all the talk about how Obama's administration is getting up to speed and is dedicated to improving the economic conditions, his actions are less than sterling in this regard.

UPDATE:
Don Surber points out that another candidate for the Treasury has opted to work for the Treasury as a counselor, instead of an Undersecretary of the Treasury, avoiding the confirmation process altogether. Lee Sachs had been working on the bailouts, but now Congress wont get to see what's behind door number 3.