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I.M.F. Official Is Named President of New York Fed

Timothy F. Geithner, an International Monetary Fund official with experience in financial crisis management, was named president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York yesterday.

The job makes Mr. Geithner, 42, a crucial player in the formulation of interest rate policy in the United States and a point man for crisis management for the domestic and international financial systems. He is expected to join the Fed in the middle of next month.

On monetary policy, Mr. Geithner will be vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, where Federal Reserve policy makers decide whether to raise, lower or leave unchanged their benchmark interest rate, the federal funds rate.

His bank is the operational arm for carrying out the Fed's monetary policy and also does the buying and selling of foreign currencies when the government intervenes in the foreign exchange market. The Fed is also a bank regulator.

But the most important job, in the view of many, is the president's role as a crisis manager. The bank ''is kind of the eye on the market and has been critical in dealing with financial market problems when they arise,'' said E. Gerald Corrigan, a former president of the New York Fed and now a managing director at Goldman Sachs.

In this vein, the New York Fed was involved in efforts to reopen the bond market after the terrorist attack in September 2001 and at the center of the effort to avert the 1998 collapse of the giant hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, when that firm's trades threatened the smooth functioning of the bond market.

For this job, Mr. Geithner comes with experience gained during his tenure in the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration under the Treasury Secretaries Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers. He was at Treasury during the emerging-markets crisis in 1997 and was under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs from 1998 to 2001. He played a significant role in the negotiation of assistance packages for South Korea and Brazil.

He worked on changes in what is called the international financial architecture in an effort to reduce the risk of financial crises. That work included helping to form the Financial Stability Forum, which brings together government officials, regulators and private individuals from around the world.

''The big role of the Fed president is crisis management and he has been baptized by fire,'' said C. Fred Bergsten, director for the Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Mr. Geithner's appointment, which was made by the board of the New York Fed and approved by the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, comes after a nine-month search and the dropping out of at least two leading candidates. He succeeds William J. McDonough, who was president from July 1993 until he stepped down in June. Jamie B. Stewart, the New York Fed's first vice president, was interim president of the bank.

''I'm honored to be selected for this post and to work with an institution that is central to domestic and global financial stability,'' Mr. Geithner said in a statement. He was not available for further comment, according to a spokesman for the New York Fed.

Peter Peterson, the chairman of the New York Fed's board, said, ''I'm pleased Tim Geithner will be at the helm; he'll do a great job.''

Mr. Geithner, Mr. Peterson added, ''is admirably equipped to confront the unique domestic and international challenges that will face our financial system over the coming years.''

In his current job at the I.M.F., Mr. Geithner is the director of the policy development and review department, which approves the fund's financial programs and works on its crisis management. At the Treasury, he was the first career civil servant to be appointed under secretary for international affairs. He joined the Treasury in 1988 and had several jobs, including assistant attaché at the United States Embassy in Tokyo.

Mr. Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates from 1985 to 1988, after receiving an M.A. in international economics and East Asian studies from the John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in 1985. He obtained his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1983.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 6 of the National edition with the headline: I.M.F. Official Is Named President of New York Fed. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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