Given that my post-doc and I are busily collecting data to compare the speed of Obama’s personnel transition with that of recent presidents, I was very interested in this disclosure about how the slow transition affected the Treasury’s TARP II plan:

Meanwhile, the sources said, Obama’s senior economic advisers were hobbled in crafting the plan by a shortage of personnel. To date, the president has not nominated any assistant secretaries or undersecretaries at the Treasury, and the handful of mid-level staffers who have started work were still finding their offices and getting their building passes and BlackBerrys.

There has to be a better way…