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Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has signaled to White House officials that he’s considering leaving the administration after President Barack Obama reaches an agreement with Congress to raise the national debt limit, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Geithner hasn’t made a final decision and won’t do so until the debt ceiling issue has been resolved, according to one of the people. All spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions.

An exit by Geithner would complete the turnover in Obama’s original economic team, with Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee scheduled to leave in early August to return to the University of Chicago.

That would leave Obama with two key posts to fill as Republicans are seeking to turn the 2012 election into a referendum on Obama’s handling of the economy and as the recovery is slowing. The unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent in May, according to the Labor Department, and the economy grew at a 1.9 percent pace in the first quarter, according to Commerce Department figures released June 24.

Geithner, 49, has told associates he needs a break from government service after dealing with the turmoil that followed the collapse of Wall Street firms, including Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., first as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as Treasury secretary.

In addition to Goolsbee, who announced his decision to return to the University of Chicago earlier this month, three other top Obama economic advisers already have departed. At the CEA, Goolsbee replaced Romer, who returned to teaching at the University of California at Berkeley last September. National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag left the administration last year. Summers returned to Harvard University, and Orszag is now vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup Inc.

Geithner earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. After graduate school, he worked for three years at a global consulting firm founded by Henry A. Kissinger.



i like how all these guys are returning to their jobs in the theoretical world of academia. how about obama get some business people in there?

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Amen!     Wish Geithner would take Eric Holder with him.