[by Larry Goldfarb]

Following Mitt Romney's defeat, Wall Street executives are starting to embrace their first choice,  President Barack Obama.  Well not exactly.  But these titans are beginning to propose Treasury Secretaries to replace Timothy F. Geithner who pledged to resign after the campaign.  While bracing for tighter regulation and hoping a deal can be struck with Congress to cut the deficit, the executives are hoping that a favorable choice to head Treasury can ameliorate the markets and lead their institutions to a period of prosperity.

So far the consensus choice is  Erskine Bowles, who served as chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton and would be a sign that Obama is willing to endorse a bipartisan debt-reduction plan supported by many business leaders, they said.

“With the appointment of the Treasury secretary, Obama will be sending an important message to the public and to the foreign governments who own a lot of Treasuries,” Curtis Arledge, chief executive officer of Bank of New York Mellon Corp.’s investment-management arm, which oversees $1.4 trillion, told journalists in New York yesterday. “If he goes with somebody like Erskine Bowles, then the message will be that he cares about the deficit and is serious about cutting it.”

Wall Street leaders started throwing their support behind Bowles’s debt-reduction efforts even before the election. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, 56, said last month that the economy “would be booming” if Congress had passed the so-called Simpson-Bowles plan co-authored with former Republican Senator Alan Simpson last year. Obama named the two in February 2010 to lead an 18-member bipartisan commission. Its $3.8 trillion budget-cutting plan would have lowered individual and corporate income-tax rates, eliminated deductions such as the one for mortgage interest, raised the gasoline tax and reduced Social Security, Medicare and discretionary spending.

The plan was rejected by seven commission members, including Romney’s vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan, and failed to reach the 14 votes required to send it to Congress. It never was taken up for a vote by the Senate and was defeated 382-38 in a House vote this year.Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein, 58, was interviewed with Bowles and Simpson on CNBC on Oct. 11 to promote reviving a bipartisan plan to reduce the $16 trillion U.S. government debt.

If there were “some compromise laid out, what kind of stimulus do you think that would provide?” Blankfein asked at the time. “I’d be a buyer of the market.”Blankfein, who wouldn’t reveal which candidate he voted for, said now that it’s over, “we can all focus on playing a part toward our shared goal of making our country and economy more successful.”

Bowles has served as a board member of Morgan Stanley since December 2005, when Mack was CEO and chairman. He is also a director of Facebook Inc. (FB) and Norfolk Southern Corp. His wife, Crandall Bowles, is on JPMorgan’s board.

For more information, please read [Bloomberg, 11/8/12]