Obama calling on economic experts for their advice

[cal04]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081107/ap_on_el_pr/obama

President-elect Obama is calling on economic experts to discuss the first steps toward healing a damaged economy as he forms a new administration in the face of a worsening crisis.

"We're not starting from nowhere," said Lawrence Summers, a Treasury secretary under President Clinton and one of the 17 members of Obama's transition economic advisory board who were to meet Friday with Obama.

"Throughout his campaign the president-elect has been talking about what we need to do. We need to put the middle class at the center of the policy approach in a way that it hasn't been these last years," Summers told NBC's "Today."

Leaders of business, government and academia to meet with Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden include executives from Xerox Corp., Time Warner Inc., Google Inc. and the Hyatt hotel company. Investor Warren Buffett was participating by telephone.


FIRST THOUGHTS: OBAMA MEETS ADVISERS, PRESS
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Carrie Dann
*** Obama meets advisers and the press: President-elect Obama gets down to business today by meeting his transition economic advisory board and then holding his first press conference since his victory Tuesday night. For his economic meeting, Obama is trotting out some big guns, including former Clinton Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Warren Buffett (via speakerphone), former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, former Clinton Commerce Secretary William Daley, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Google CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Are we supposed to read into anything that some potential Obama Treasury secretaries are participating in the meeting (Summers, Buffett, Volcker) and others are not (Tim Geithner of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon)? Appearing on TODAY, Summers sidestepped questions about whether he’s Obama’s top choice for the Treasury job. As for today’s presser, Obama will have lots of questions to answer today regarding the economy with the backdrop of a cratering stock market, awful job numbers (240,000 lost last month), and depressing retail sales figures. Specific answers he gives to his position on a stimulus package and where is he on bailing out the auto industry could have the potential of dominating the headlines.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/07/1662499.aspx

[panAmerican]

1. I sure hope Nouriel Roubini is at the top of that call list