Treasury backlogged during crisis

Critical decisions are piling up at the U.S. Treasury nearly four months after Timothy Geithner became treasury secretary, officials said.

Scrambling to assemble new programs in the midst of a financial crisis, the Treasury appears to be run by a core group of counselors who are not authorized to make key decisions, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Major decisions can happen very fast at the top, and then after that there are tons of detail and nuances that have to get worked out without clear chains of command, one senior official told the Post.

Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, expressed concern that Geithner was not moving fast enough to fill key positions. I wish he would move quicker to put in his own people, Frank said.

The administration has yet to fill the deputy secretary position and two key undersecretary jobs remain unfilled, the newspaper reported.

Geithner acknowledged the pressure was on.

In a crisis, the most important thing is to show the capacity for credible initiative that is actually going to fix the problem. That’s why we are trying to do so much so early, he said.