Bloomberg reports Barack Obama has two leading candidates for Treasury secretary:

Barack Obama’s top priority will be appointing a Treasury secretary and White House chief of staff. The leading candidates: two Clinton administration stalwarts, Lawrence Summers and Representative Rahm Emanuel.

ABC News, citing an unnamed source, said today that Obama offered the job to Emanuel and Emanuel has not yet responded.

Emanuel, 48, would bring an exceptional understanding of the nexus between politics and policy and of the way Washington works, critical requisites for that job.

His detractors say his tough, take-no-prisoners approach is antithetical to the tone and style of the Obama presidential campaign.

As much as the Obama campaign considered change to be at the core of their program, reality dictates that key positions are filled with people who have the experience and knowledge to quickly act as market conditions change.  Secretary of the Treasury isn’t a position where someone experiences “on the job” training because the ramifications of mis-steps are very significant for many Americans.  While I don’t believe the Clinton administration had much to do with the concurrent economic expansion of that time, I still don’t see the proposed choices as being bad ones.  If we consider who’s currently in charge, those choices actually look rather good.