WASHINGTON (AFP) – Timothy Geithner was sworn in as US Treasury Secretary on Monday and pledged quick action to help restore the crumbing US economy that was left reeling from a fresh wave of job losses.
Geithner, 47, took his oath shortly after the Senate voted to confirm him as treasury secretary, despite misgivings over his personal tax problems and ongoing government efforts to rescue the battered US economy.
Speaking ahead of Geithner's swearing-in, President Barack Obama highlighted the urgency of the work at hand, noting that 2.5 million jobs were lost last year and seven major corporations have just announced thousands more cuts.
"We cannot lose a day because every day the economic picture is darkening, here and across the globe," Obama said at the Treasury Department, located next door to the White House.
"It will take a secretary of the treasury who understands this challenge and all its complexities to help lead us forward," added Obama, who is eager to confront the worst US downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
"You have got your work cut out for you as I think everybody knows. But you also have my full confidence, my deepest trust, my unyielding belief that we can rise to achieve what is required of us at this moment."
Geithner, a senior Treasury official in the 1990s, brings inside knowledge of how the crisis has unfolded from his most recent job as president of the New York Federal Reserve.
"Our agenda, Mr. President, is to move quickly to help you do what the country asked you to do ... to restore confidence in America's economic leadership around the world," he said at the ceremony.
Among his immediate objectives were "to make our economy more productive ... to restore trust in our financial system with fundamental reform (and) to make our tax system better at rewarding work and investment," he said.
Senators voted 60-34 to confirm Geithner after debate in which foes cited his failure to pay certain taxes earlier this decade and his support for government intervention in the economy while his backers stressed his expertise and the urgent need to pull the US economy out of a paralyzing recession.
"The approval of Secretary Geithner is an important step in tackling the economic crisis head-on," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Democrat, said after the vote. "But there's no honeymoon. Now the work begins."
Opposition came mostly from Republicans, joined by three Democratic Senators -- Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Tom Harkin of Iowa, and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin -- as well as independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont who usually votes with the Democrats.
During the debate, lawmakers zeroed in on Geithner's past failure to pay certain US payroll taxes during his 2001-2004 employment at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and some warned that a vote for him was a vote for unwarranted government intervention in the US economy.
"I don't believe Mr Geithner has been remotely candid," about his tax trouble, said Republican Senator James Inhofe, who warned a "yes" vote amounted to "ratifying aggressive federal government intervention in the economy."
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who backed the nomination, expressed misgivings about the tax imbroglio but said Geithner was "not incompetent, nor corrupt, and he's certainly not unethical."
Hatch said Geithner was "uniquely qualified" to help revive the US economy and warned fellow conservatives that they would regret forcing Obama to pick someone else because "you are not going to get a better person for this job."
At his confirmation hearing last week, Geithner, who replaces secretary Henry Paulson, apologized for his "completely unintentional" tax errors, insisting he had paid back 34,000 dollars to the Internal Revenue Service -- which he is now in line to supervise.
Geithner promised a "comprehensive plan" for the economy, starting with the housing market, and vowed to reopen frozen lines of credit by exerting greater pressure on banks that have benefited from a 700-billion-dollar bailout.
Reiterating the cardinal tenet of past administrations, he said "a strong dollar is in America's national interest" as he promised to make wise use of a planned stimulus package worth a whopping 825 billion dollars.
On the international front, he wrote that Obama believes China is manipulating its currency, the yuan, and plans aggressive diplomacy to ensure US trading partners play fair.
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