President Barack Obama announced three new nominations for posts at the Department of Treasury over the weekend. He has selected Michael S. Barr as assistant secretary for financial institutions; Helen Elizabeth Garrett for assistant secretary of tax policy; and George W. Madison as Treasury general counsel. The posts still require Senate confirmation.
The president has made several appointments over the past several weeks to fill the Treasury’s top ranks. Obama himself said that the vacancies have hampered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s efforts to mend the nation’s ailing financial system. According to a “Bloomberg”:http://www.bloomberg.com report, the Department is still without an undersecretary for domestic finance, the division most closely involved in the campaign to end the financial crisis.
In an interview Sunday on NBC’s ““Meet the Press”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608,” Geithner said, the administration is seeking “people with experience in banking and markets, not just policy,” for the remaining Treasury positions.
Although, the White House has had some difficulty finding candidates who actually want the jobs due to concerns about congressional and public scrutiny of their finances and tax records, as well as their involvement with companies that have received federal aid.

Michael Barr, the nominee for assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions, was special adviser to former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and former President Bill Clinton. He is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Brookings Institution in Washington. A former Rhodes Scholar, Barr received his law degree and undergraduate degree from Yale University and an international relations degree from Oxford University.
Helen Elizabeth Garrett, Obama’s nominee for assistant secretary for tax policy, was a member of former President George W. Bush’s 2005 tax advisory panel. She is a lawyer and University of Southern California (USC) economist, and currently serves as chair of the finance committee for the national governing board of Common Cause, a Washington-based advocacy group. She is co-director of the USC’s Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics, a former professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court.
George W. Madison, general counsel nominee, is former EVP and general counsel of TIAA-CREF. He also served as EVP, general counsel, and corporate secretary at Comerica Incorporated, and practiced banking and structured finance law on behalf of foreign and domestic money center banks for a New York law firm. Madison graduated from New York University’s Stern School of Business, received his law degree from Columbia Law School, and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.
In a press statement about the most recent nominations, President Obama said, “The Treasury Department will be well-served by the expertise and commitment of these fine individuals. Under the leadership of Secretary Geithner, I have great confidence that they will be valuable and effective additions to our team as we tackle our nation’s economic challenges.”