President-elect Barack Obama yesterday (Monday) formally unveiled his economic team, including the nomination of New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy F. Geithner as the new administration’s U.S. Treasury secretary. The team’s first challenge will be assembling an economic stimulus package that could be even larger than the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) the Bush Administration has deployed.

The nomination of Geithner to succeed current U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. was leaked over the weekend, and was reported by Money Morning yesterday.

Geithner (pronounced: GITE-ner) obtained a Master of Arts degree in International Economics and East Asian Studies from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in 1985. He also has studied Japanese and Chinese and has lived in present-day Zimbabwe, India, Thailand and China.

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Biden was never a frontrunner in the 2008 Election, but he was always considered as a favorite VP choice (along with Bill Richardson). It seems, however, that if Barack chooses Biden as VP, quite a few things he said back in his presidential bid would come back to haunt him. Most notably: “The only guy on the other side who’s qualified is John McCain.” “The Biden for President Campaign today congratulated Sen. Barack Obama for arriving at a number of Sen. Biden’s long-held views on combating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” “My impression is [Obama] thinks that if we leave, somehow the Iraqis are going to have an epiphany” of peaceful coexistence among warring sects. “I’ve seen zero evidence of that.” It would almost be like Biden would be doing McCain’s work for him. Read the original article here for more examples.