Besides Timothy Geithner, is anyone running the Treasury Department?

An activist government needs active people to run it, and perhaps nowhere is that more pressing than at the Treasury Department. The New Republic and the Wall Street Journal have in recent days reported on some of the slowness at getting staff aboard, given the lateness of Secretary Timothy Geithner’s own confirmation.

However, The Big Money can reveal that the situation may be even more dire than first reported. This list of “Treasury Officials,” taken from the Department’s Web site this morning, shows that the Main Treasury Building is a lonely place, conjuring visions of Geithner signing dollar bills one-by-one for legal circulation, watering the plants, and answering the phones when he’s not crafting a bank rescue plan.

Now some names of people actually working at Treasury have surfaced. We know, for instance, that Steve Rattner and Ron Bloom are advising Geithner as part of his auto task force co-chair duties. And Paulson-holdover and Assistant Secretary Neel Kashakri remains to run the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program.