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As The Wall Street Journal explains, Geithner is helping President Obama decide the fate of Bernanke, whose term as Fed chair expires in January. The pundit class is attempting to handicap whether Obama will axe Bernanke, a Bush appointee, and replace him with Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser and a former Clinton Treasury secretary, or someone else. In many ways, Geithner is the best man to evaluate the pros and cons of the two men -- having worked closely with both through the years. Summers was Geithner's mentor when the two worked at Treasury in the 1990s. The pair worked closely through a number of crises, including the Asian Contagion and the collapse of John Meriwether's Long-Term Capital Management, so he knows how Summers reacts amid economic turmoil. Likewise, as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner worked closely with Bernanke from the day he took the chairmanship in 2006 from Alan Greenspan. When the crisis came to a head in 2008 with the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos., Geithner and Bernanke were attached at the hip -- much like he was attached to Summers during the Asian Crisis a decade earlier. So who will he choose? It likely is a tough call. In fact Clusterstock notes that Geithner seems to have gone MIA as he ponders the decision. Geithner could take a cue from another friend of Summers, Larry Lindsey, who told CNBC he'd expect the administration to stick with Bernanke. (Lindsey discusses the topic around the five minute mark in the video below.) However, Lindsey was a member of the Bush administration's economic team, so maybe his advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, Lindsey's assessment dovetails with the results of the Journal's survey of economists, who overwhelmingly support sticking with Bernanke. Likewise, the Intrade options trading continues to indicate Obama will stick with Bernanke -- but the numbers have slowly dropped in the last week. However, in six months time, anything could happen that could change the decision, and poor Geithner will be plagued with it from now till New Years'. - Matthew Wurtzel
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Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has plenty of conflicts for pundits to contemplate, but a tricky one he faces personally is the one concerning his two mentors, Larry Summers and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. 
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