I think I just heard the president say Geithner and/or Summers will be leaving

Just watching President Obama’s town hall meeting at Washington’s Newseum, questioned
by CNBC’s chief Washington correspondent, John Harwood. The audience was a
friendly one, but the hurtful questions kept coming — two from people who
expressed their deepest admiration for Barack Obama during the campaign — both
voted for him — but their deepest disappointment with things as they stand now.

From the CNBC live blog:

“Woman says she’s exhausted defending Obama, she’s waiting for something to
happen. She has two children in private school and says she thought she was
beyond the hot dogs-and-beans reality. She asks, Is this what she’s supposed to
face now?”

From The Washington Post:

“Then a 30-year-old law school graduate said he’s no longer able to make the
interest payments on his educational loans, much less able to have a mortgage
or a family. He said he had been inspired by Obama’s campaign. But now, ‘that
inspiration is dying away. … I really want to know: Is the American dream dead?’
”

When Harwood asked the president if he will change his economic team before the
end of his first term, specifically Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and
economic adviser Larry Summers, Obama answered that he hasn’t “made any
determinations about personnel … This is tough, the work that they do … you
know, they’re going to have a whole range of decisions about family that will
factor into this as well.”

Hmmmm. That looks like the oldest explanation in the political playbook: They’ll
be leaving, Obama seems to be saying, to spend more time with their families.