So in a purely anthropological sense, lack of experience in banking or with the Fed notwithstanding, Geithner was a perfect choice. He was a child of the perma-establishment—born not with a silver spoon in his mouth but with a briefcase tucked under his arm. His father, Peter Geithner, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Africa and Washington before joining the Ford Foundation, where he spent 28 years, holding senior posts in Asia. Tim spent his formative years in Japan and other points east, attending elementary school in New Delhi, where he lived in the upscale New Friends Colony, and he graduated from the International School in Bangkok. From there, he followed in his father’s footsteps to Dartmouth College, then to Johns Hopkins, from which he received a master’s in international economics and East Asian studies in 1985. Soon after, he married a Dartmouth classmate, Carole Sonnenfeld, and they now have a son and a daughter.

Since college, he has gone pretty much straight up the ladder—no detours, no backpacking around Europe, no internship fetching coffee. And every step of the way, his accomplishments and mastery of the details of international finance have been recognized. He has always had what used to be known in the New York Police Department as a rabbi—a high-level official who promotes a person’s career. In his first job, with Kissinger Associates, he worked directly for Henry Kissinger, researching a book. “He did such good work that I still have some of the papers, for another book I may write,” Kissinger says. Then, when Geithner went to the Treasury Department, he held a variety of lower-level positions, including assistant attaché at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, before being plucked from the great amorphous mass of aspiring civil servants by Larry Summers, then Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, and named his special assistant. With Summers as his backer, he was moved to positions of increasing responsibility, beginning with deputy assistant secretary for international monetary affairs. “He stood out as being in an entirely different league,” Summers recalls. By Summers’ account, Geithner avoided a certain occupational hazard for some young strivers—brownnosing—and spoke his mind. “The ego is disengaged, but he’s very comfortable with himself and very direct—not promoting himself, but just concerned with doing the right thing,” Summers says.

Evidently that was something of a magic formula, as Geithner climbed through the bureaucracy, holding jobs with titles like senior deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury. In the department’s complex hierarchy, the simpler the title, the greater the power. Geithner soon emerged as assistant secretary, then in 1999, undersecretary for international affairs, Summers’ old job. In the interim, Geithner acquired a reputation as a man to be trusted with tough jobs. He negotiated the 1995 U.S.-Japan financial services agreement and served as U.S. negotiator for a 1997 World Trade Organization financial services agreement. Every step of the way, Geithner proved his precociousness. “He was smarter, and he saw problems in much more holistic ways” than his peers did, Summers says. “He was able to see the problem from the perspective of the secretary or the president, who had to decide from the point of view of a wide variety of considerations.”

Geithner truly earned his international-finance stripes during the emerging-markets troubles of the late 1990s—the tumult that led directly to the meltdown of L.T.C.M., which established a template for the Bear Stearns fiasco. “That whole period was one long crisis,” Greenspan recalls, and that was when Geithner proved his mettle in the eyes of the Fed chairman. Geithner showed a “general understanding of the nature of what the problems were and what was required to right the system,” Greenspan says, echoing Summers’ praise.

Geithner’s shining moment came as he negotiated assistance packages for Brazil, South Korea, Thailand, and other teetering countries, helping assemble more than $100 billion in international aid. At the time, the packages raised concerns similar to those surrounding the Bear Stearns bailout, and they elicited much the same defense. But despite the misgivings, Geithner, Summers, and Treasury undersecretary David Lipton were able to contain the now nearly forgotten crisis—only forgotten, mind you, because the bailout was a success.