Obama's pick for Treasury is offside with Republicans

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama's latest reported cabinet nomination - Jack Lew, the White House chief of staff, to replace Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary - shows the President is in no mood to compromise with Congressional Republicans.

Mr Lew, a Washington insider and former Wall Street chief operating officer, once maintained good relations among Republicans. That ended when he led the President's bruising budget negotiations in 2011.

When the Republicans reopened negotiations after a collapse they did so with a message to the President, according to Bob Woodward's book, The Price of Politics. ''Please don't send Jack Lew. The budget director talked too much, was uncompromising, and Boehner's staff did not believe he could get to yes.''

In a later interview with Woodward. the RepublicanHerculean task. Many others consider it impossible.

Jack (Jacob) Lew is the son of a middle-class Jewish family from Queens, and still lives in Brooklyn. Though he could not be further from the close Obama Chicago network, he became such a trusted adviser over the President's first term that when it was rumoured he might be offered the Treasury post, The National Journal speculated the only black mark against him could be that Mr Obama would consider him too valuable to release.

US President Barack Obama, right, with White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew. Photo: AFP

After graduating from New York City public schools Lew studied law at Harvard and at Georgetown University in Washington, before becoming a senior adviser to the former House speaker Tip O'Neill and later to