After waiting for Treasury Secretary Geithner's plan to revive the financial sector, it appears the Obama administration has delayed revealing the plan to the world in order to keep the focus on his political stimulus package.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/06/news/newsmakers/geithner.plan.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009020813

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is expected to lay out the government's strategy for reviving the banking system in a speech Tuesday. The plan was originally set to be unveiled Monday, but the Treasury Department said Sunday it was postponing the announcement to allow Geithner and other economic officials to focus on trying to get the stimulus package in Congress passed first.

Resolving the problems in the financial sector are absolutely paramount to any economic recovery, with or without the stimulus package. It is absolutely absurd to believe that a brief announcement of a plan that has presumably already been put together would distract from Geither's and "other economic officials" ability to focus on other issues once the announcement was made.

The delay in the plan is strictly political. President Obama is conducting a town hall meeting in Indiana today and has a prime-time press conference tonight at 8pm. It seems that a political decision was made that they don't want the plan for the financial sector to eclipse Obama's political efforts to get the stimulus package passed.

Rather than being concerned about Geithner being distracted by announcing the plan, it seems they're concerned about the American people being distracted. This is a reasonable political concern, but keeping the world in the dark about the planned response to the critical issues in the financial sector so that Obama can attempt to keep the spotlight on his stimulus package is doing a disservice to the economy.

Interestingly, during the campaign Obama suggested that the president should be able to handle more than one thing at once:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26872907/

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama rejected Republican Sen. John McCain's dramatic call Wednesday to delay Friday's presidential debate because of the economic crisis...

As for the debate, he said, 'It's going to be part of the president's job to be able to deal with more than one thing at once.'

But now Geithner must delay his announcement "to focus on trying to get the stimulus package in Congress passed first." What happened to being able to deal with more than one thing at once?

Dealing with the financial sector must be addressed immediately. It should not be delayed to fit comfortably into the president's political schedule. Especially when the plan to deal with the financial sector is arguably more important than the stimulus package.