Washington  - Timothy Geithner, a career civil servant heavily involved in current efforts to bring stability to the crumbling US financial system, offers a large degree of continuity as president-elect Barack Obama's Treasury secretary.

Geithner, who was named to the post Monday, has been battling the current credit crisis for more than a year as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Come January, he will be in charge of rescuing the United States from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Since the US mortgage market collapse sent Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc into bankruptcy in September, Geithner has become a key player in the government's attempts to halt the downward spiral of the US financial system.

Serving as New York fed chief since 2003, Geithner has been the central bank's top liaison with Wall Street's financial institutions. News of his likely appointment as Treasury secretary helped Wall Street stocks rally more than 6 per cent on Friday.

Together with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Geithner has spearheaded the central bank's unprecedented efforts to loan hundreds of billions of dollars to banks that were heavily exposed to the US housing market.

With Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Geithner helped write the 700-billion-dollar bail-out package that has allowed the government to acquire stakes in banks in return for cash infusions. Media reports suggested he wanted an earlier, more aggressive approach that included a bail-out of Lehman Brothers.

Geithner will take over operation of the rescue package from Paulson when Obama takes office January 20. About half of the original funds will likely still be available to invest in banks and other institutions of his choosing.

An early flashpoint may be whether to widen the bail-out to include non-financial institutions, which the current administration has opposed. Automakers have been lobbying hard for a 25-billion-dollar rescue of their own.

As one of 12 members of the Fed board of governors that sets interest rates, Geithner has supported aggressively lowering rates to keep the world's largest economy out of recession.

In the new administration he will also lead Obama's promise of a massive new fiscal stimulus package, which Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer Sunday said could total
700 billion dollars.

Geithner, 47, first joined the Treasury in 1988. He has worked under three presidential administrations and five different Treasury chiefs.

From 1999 to 2001, Geithner served as the Treasury's undersecretary for international affairs, a position that exposed him to the lessons of the Asian financial crisis that plunged that region into recession in the late 1990s.

Shortly before joining the New York Fed, Geithner worked as a policy director for the International Monetary Fund, which is currently expanding its role as an emergency lender to countries facing cash shortages due to the credit crisis.

Despite his young age, Geithner offers a wealth of experience in financial crises. He does not have strong links to either political party and his appointment was met with praise from both Republicans and Democrats.

But critics of the government's management of the current downturn - and its failure to see the crisis coming - will view Geithner as more of the same.

As head of the New York Fed, Geithner oversaw the creation of many of the complex financial instruments that have led the industry into its current predicament. Though at times critical of a lack of government oversight, Geithner argued as late as 2006 that financial innovation was a boon to the nation's economy.

Geithner has lived in a number of East Asian countries and studied both Japanese and Chinese. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in government and Asian studies from Dartmouth College and a master's in international economics and East Asian studies from Johns Hopkins in 1985. He is married with two children. (dpa)