In a conference call during the transition between the 2008 election and his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama wanted to discuss his first-term agenda.

Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy F. Geithner spoke up: “Your accomplishment is going to be preventing a second Great Depression.”

That wasn’t enough for Obama, after campaigning on a lengthy agenda of change.

“I’m not going to be defined by what I prevented,” Obama retorted.

“If you don’t prevent a depression, you won’t be able to do anything else,” Geithner replied.

Geithner replayed that scene, the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis and the frantic efforts to ward off another Great Depression in his book, “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.”

In the book, which could really be classified as a collection of horror stories, he recounts the more frightening moments of the crisis and the internal debate in the Obama administration to avert disaster.

It is 580 pages, but contains more than 41 pages of notes, acknowledgements, charts and graphs, as well as a glossary of terms. Despite the myriad of alphabet agencies and government programs covered in the book, it’s very readable.

Contrary to what his detractors said, Geithner was never part of a Wall Street bank, did not have a doctorate in economics, was not a lawyer or a politician. He was a technocrat, who spent two decades in the Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve system, with his last post as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank before becoming Obama’s Treasury secretary.

What he was, was an expert in financial crisis management with lessons learned starting with the Mexican and South American crises and later the Indonesian,Thai and the Russian financial crises.

Considering his background, he was qualified to be Treasury secretary during the worst financial crisis in 75 years.

But it was a job he never wanted. He tried to talk Obama out of appointing him and had, during his tenure, offered to resign many times. Geithner had told Obama that he was a poor public speaker and was afraid he could not convince the public and Congress to go along with what he, Obama economic adviser Larry Summers, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke thought should be done.

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