As expected, President-Elect Obama has named his leading economic advisers:
(CNN) — President-elect Barack Obama said Monday that the country is facing an “economic crisis of historic proportions,” and unveiled the team he has chosen to help get the economy back on track.
Obama said he sought leaders who share his fundamental belief that “we cannot have a thriving Wall Street without a thriving Main Street.”
Obama has tapped New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner as treasury secretary and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers as chief of the National Economic Council.
Geithner helped manage Wall Street’s financial meltdown earlier this year, overseeing the acquisition of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase, the bailout of AIG and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. He was appointed as the New York Federal Reserve president in November 2003.
Summers served as treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. He was the chief economist of the World Bank from 1991 through 1993. Prior to his career in government, Summers taught economics at Harvard.
University of California-Berkeley economics professor Christina Romer has been chosen to be the chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
The Council of Economic Advisers is a group of economists –including three who are appointed by the president and need Senate confirmation — that advise the president on economic policy.
Obama also announced Melody Barnes as director of the Domestic Policy Council and Heather Higginbottom as deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council.
The general consensus seems to be positive on both Geithner and Summers, and it’s somewhat reassuring to note that both of them are ardent free-traders. Hopefully, they’ll whisper enough wisdom in Obama’s ears to steer him away from the “fair trade” nonsense that Democrats like to talk about.
