Despite criticism over his personal tax affairs, the Senate's powerful finance committee voted 18-5 to endorse Geithner's appointment to arguably the most crucial job in the new cabinet of President Barack Obama.

While joining fellow Republicans in castigating Geithner's past failure to pay certain US payroll taxes, Republican Olympia Snowe said: "I do believe his resume is essential for this time."

Influential Democrat Kent Conrad said the tax problems arising from Geithner's 2001-2004 employment at the International Monetary Fund were "completely unacceptable."

"In normal times that alone would lead me to oppose his confirmation," he said. "But these are not normal times. I believe we cannot afford further delay in filling this critical position."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he will move rapidly to bring the nomination to a vote by the full chamber, as Obama gets to work on tackling the nation's worst economic crisis since the 1930s Great Depression.

The stakes were laid bare Thursday as US stocks swung lower after fresh government data showed weekly jobless claims had shot up to a 26-year high and housing construction starts were on the slide.

Geithner, a senior Treasury official in the 1990s, brings to bear inside knowledge of how the crisis has unfolded from his most recent job as president of the New York Federal Reserve.

At his confirmation hearing Wednesday, he apologized for his "completely unintentional" tax errors, insisting he had paid back 34,000 dollars to the Internal Revenue Service -- which he is now in line to supervise.

Geithner promised a "comprehensive plan" for the economy, starting with the housing market, and vowed to reopen frozen lines of credit by exerting greater pressure on banks that have benefited from a 700-billion-dollar bailout.

Reiterating the cardinal tenet of past administrations, he said "a strong dollar is in America's national interest" as he promised to make wise use of a planned stimulus package worth a whopping 825 billion dollars.

Following up his confirmation hearing, Geithner fleshed out his policy priorities in a 102-page packet of answers to senators' written questions.

On the international front, he wrote that Obama believes China is manipulating its currency, the yuan, and plans aggressive diplomacy to ensure US trading partners play fair.

"President Obama -- backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists -- believes that China is manipulating its currency," Geithner said.

"President Obama has pledged as president to use aggressively all the diplomatic avenues open to him to seek change in China's currency practices," he said.

Geithner promised "deep engagement" with China but did not commit to continuing a somewhat fitful "strategic economic dialogue" initiated by the former Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson.

That engagement would cover "currency issues, inadequate intellectual property rights protections, product safety, and non-tariff barriers."

"The yuan is certainly an important piece of that discussion, but given the crisis the immediate focus needs to be on the broader issue of stabilizing domestic demand in China and the US," Geithner stressed.

He pledged to extend the outgoing administration's offensive of banking sanctions "to prevent Iran from misusing the financial system to engage in proliferation and terrorism."

At home, Obama's economic lieutenant said an overhaul of Wall Street was long overdue, promising to look at regulation of unregistered hedge funds and to shed greater light on the opaque role of credit ratings agencies.

"Our financial system architecture is unsound and outdated. We need a fundamental redesign," he wrote.

"Among other things, this includes better prevention and detection methods, better enforcement authority, (a) resolution regime for systemically important non-banks and better checks on excessive risk."

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