By Tom Braithwaite and Ajay Makan, Financial Times

Three years ago Wall Street employees flocked to Washington, attracted by the energising rhetoric of Barack Obama, the call of public service and the sudden dearth of jobs in the financial sector.

In the chaotic first days of the Obama administration, the best qualified were thrown into the Treasury department to deal with the financial crisis. Now many have left, returning to the private sector through the famous “revolving door” that separates prize jobs in government from those in business.

Last week alone, Lazard announced that Ron Bloom, one of its former bankers who later managed the government’s rescue of the US car sector, was returning to the firm as a senior adviser; and it emerged that Goldman Sachs was close to hiring Jake Siewert, a former top aide to Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary.

The Treasury says the churn is a natural result of measures taken to fight the crisis, with staff hired specifically to deal with the emergency of 2008 and 2009 departing once the worst was over. But some insiders and several of the departed officials say it leaves the administration short of qualified personnel at the agency that – perhaps more than any other – stands on the front line in maintaining the stability of the global financial system.

“Especially in a crisis situation, continuity’s important,” says Sheila Bair. The former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the government guarantor of US bank accounts, worked with – and sometimes clashed with – the Geithner Treasury, and is herself a former official of the department during George W. Bush’s administration. “Some turnover is good: having the core of the career staff and some fresh perspective is a nice blend but I think you can carry that too far,” she says.

Certainly, there has been a dizzying traffic of officials at Hamilton Place, the department’s imposing headquarters next door to the White House, ever since Mr Geithner succeeded Hank Paulson as Treasury secretary in January 2009.

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