New York Daily News: Obama values experience, credentials in economic team; Volcker, Goolsbee latest picks
BY CATEY HILL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
President-elect Barack Obama may be known for his youth – only four presidents have taken office that were younger than him – and rally cries of “change,” but when it comes to his choices for his economic team, experience and wisdom are the order of the day. Obama’s economic team has impeccable credentials, years of experience and numerous awards between them.
His latest picks, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and University of Chicago economist, Austan Goolsbee, are no exception.
Volcker, 81, will head the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a new White House panel to help President-elect Barack Obama create jobs and bring stability to the ailing financial system. Goolsbee will be the Economic Recovery Advisory Board’s top staff official
“Vice President-elect Biden and I have assembled an economic team with the vision and expertise to stabilize our economy, create jobs, and get America back on track. Even as we face great economic challenges, we know that great opportunity is at hand — if we act swiftly and boldly. That’s the mission our economic team will take on,” said President-elect Obama in a statement released on November 24.
Meet the members of Obama’s economic team:
Paul Volcker, Director of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Volcker was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Regan. He has also served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for international monetary affairs and president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. After receiving his M.A. in economics from Harvard University, he attended the London School of Economics on a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellowship.
Austan Goolsbee, Top staff official of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Goolsbee, a Fulbright scholar, is the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He has been named one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum, one of the six ‘Gurus of the Future’ by the Financial Times and one of the 40 Under 40 by Crain’s Chicago Business. Goolsbee has also served as the Senior Economist to the Progressive Policy Institute.
Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury
Geithner is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has worked in the Department of the Treasury since 1988 and was the director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund until 2003.
Lawrence Summers, Director of the National Economic Council
Summers, former president of Harvard University, was the Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001. Before that, he was the Deputy and Under Secretary of the Treasury and a World Bank economist. He is the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, an award given to an econmist under 40 who has made the most impact upon the field of economics.
Christina Romer, Director of the Council of Economic Advisors
Romer is a director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a former vice president of the American Economic Association, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship recipient co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Melody Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Barnes was the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She was the Director of Legislative Affairs for the EEOC and assistant counsel to the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Heather Higginbottom, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Higginbottom served as Senator John Kerry’s Legislative Director and the Deputy National Policy Director for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign. She founded the American Security Project, a national security think tank.
