U.S. Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner is confident that he will not keep his current job if the Obama administration is able to win the upcoming general election in the fall.
During an appearance on Bloomberg Television Wednesday, Mr. Geithner also stated that he believes President Barack Obama will be re-elected, but that the president will have a new role for Mr. Geithner to fill over the next four years.
“He’s 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… Something else for me,” said Mr. Geithner Wednesday.
Much like the president, Mr. Geithner faced many high profile issues during what is likely to be his only term as the Secretary of Treasury. He had to play a large role in the allocation of funds from the Bush administration’s Troubled Assets Relief Program, among other decisions regarding the struggling U.S. economy.
Mr. Geithner also addressed several issues that the president discussed during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, including tax reform, restoring the manufacturing industry in the U.S., lowering the corporate tax rate and competing with China globally.
The president called for tax reform to the U.S. tax code that promotes more “economic fairness” and Mr. Geithner agrees.
“The president’s long supported that. And you see a lot of support for trying to do that. And it serves a basic principle of fairness in this context. So we’re going to work to doing that,” said Mr. Geithner Wednesday.
The Treasury secretary also tied his comments regarding the Dodd-Frank law into his comments on promoting economic fairness with tax reforms. In contrast to the Republican criticism of the Dodd-Frank law, Mr. Geithner supports it and posited that Americans should be more worried about job creation than financial regulations regarding Wall Street.
Although he did not hint at who the president will likely select to replace him as the U.S. Secretary of Treasury, Mr. Geithner made it clear that he will not be at that post in 2013.
