Here’s a switch. XTO Energy, the Fort Worth oil and gas company, promoted two executives last week and cut their pay potential for next year. It also eliminated the chairman’s bonus.

No team of rivals, this. Top members of the president-elect’s economic team - Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers and Peter Orszag - are all proteges of former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, one of the Democratic architects of the financial deregulation undertaken in the Clinton years.

Hillary Clinton to State; Timothy F. Geithner to Treasury; Malia and Sasha to Sidwell Friends School.

The curious timing of Mack Whittle’s retirement as CEO of The South Financial Group continues to test the boundary of what constitutes a golden parachute at a bank receiving emergency aid from the federal Troubled Assets Relief Program.

A sense of fairness is treasured in the news business. But connections are, too. Tom Brokaw, currently the interim host of “Meet the Press,” would seem to have both.

Timothy Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, is expected to be tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to be the next secretary of the U.S. Treasury, reports NBC News.

In anticipation of Thanksgiving, Sarah Palin pardoned a turkey in Wasilla, AK.

He has been called the “scariest guy in town” and “the Democrats’ Eliot Ness.”