Geithner, Summers among key economic team members announced today

[ProSense]

Geithner, Summers among key economic team members announced today

Chicago -- President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden officially announced key members of their economic team today, naming Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury and Lawrence Summers as Director of the National Economic Council. Obama and Biden also named Christina Romer as Chair of the Council of Economic advisors, and named Melody Barnes and Heather Higginbottom to serve as Director and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

"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.

The economic team members announced today are listed below:

Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury
Timothy Geithner currently serves as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he has played a key role in formulating the nation's monetary policy. He joined the Department of the Treasury in 1988 and has served three presidents. From 1999 to 2001, he served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. Following that post he served as director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund until 2003. Geithner is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council
Lawrence Summers is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University. Summers served as 71st Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006. Before being appointed Secretary, Summers served as Deputy and Under Secretary of the Treasury and as the World Bank's top economist. Summers has taught economics at Harvard and MIT, and is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the American economist under 40 judged to have made the most significant contribution to economics. Summers played a key advisory role during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Christina D. Romer, Director of the Council of Economic Advisors
Christina Romer is the Class of 1957 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has taught and researched since 1988. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley, Romer was an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Romer is co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been a visiting scholar at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Melody C. Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Melody Barnes is co-director of the Agency Review Working Group for the Obama-Biden Transition Team, and served as the Senior Domestic Policy Advisor to Obama for America. Barnes previously served as Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress and as chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee from December 1995 until March 2003.

Heather A. Higginbottom, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Heather Higginbottom served as Policy Director for Obama for America, overseeing all aspects of policy development. From 1999 to 2007, Higginbottom served as Senator John Kerry's Legislative Director. She also served as the Deputy National Policy Director for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign for the primary and general elections. After the 2004 election, Higginbottom founded and served as Executive Director of the American Security Project, a national security think tank. She started her career as an advocate at the national non-profit organization Communities in Schools.

The President-elect's full statement is below.

more

[Runcible Spoon]

1. Summers is a disgusting piece of shit.

Not too happy about this one. Took me a minute to recall the Harvard flap over his comments about men having innate advantages over women in engineering fields. Pair that with his love for rampant "free" trade, corporate greed, and globalization, and you get :puke: from me.

[anonymous171]

2. Obama needs to have a couple corporate tools on his team.

Gives Wall Street a sense of security.

[Runcible Spoon]

3. last thing Wall Street needs is a false sense of security.

They SHOULD be scared SHITLESS.

[tabatha]

4. Three of the five are women.

[Runcible Spoon]

6. ok zero relavency to my comment but whatever

I'm still looking over the list, but I will say being a woman has 0 things to do with being progressive on economic policy.

[tabatha]

8. Obviously Obama paid no attention to what he thinks about women.

[Runcible Spoon]

9. As I said below, for someone with advanced education and experience like Summers...

the theories on evolution and social behavior go hand in hand with economic theory. I think his opinions about women having less aptitude for "hard" science are absolutely salient to his perspectives on economic policy. Summers does not represent any kind of populism or change from the last administation, unfortunately.

[tabatha]

13. Well, I agree with you there.

Capitalism in general is at odds with the environment - in fact - it destroys it. As growth and jobs were talked about, I was hoping that Obama has an understanding of what excessive growth does to the world. At some point growth - eg housing starts - has to to stop, otherwise we will have to go inhabit the moon.

[ProSense]

14. Not so obvious.

The Harvard controversies were a factor in Mr. Obama’s consideration of Mr. Summers for Treasury secretary. Leaders of several women’s groups said they warned Obama advisers that a 2005 furor over remarks that some interpreted as Mr. Summers questioning women’s intelligence in math and science relative to men’s, would be revived if he were nominated. The Treasury post requires Senate confirmation; the National Economic Council director does not.

Yet Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said her group’s research actually produced material that recommended him. “One good thing about Larry Summers,” she said, “is that he has written and spoken fairly extensively on the issue of women’s wage inequality and the impact that has on the country.”

link

[scheming daemons]

5. Summers is good at his job.... not so good at anthropology....

The guy is an economic genius.


He fails the "gender politics" purity test.... but that has nothing to do with his appointed job.


I don't care how flawed his views are in scientific areas..... I care about how he does in his assignment.


...and he's pretty good at THAT job.

[Runcible Spoon]

7. good at what? continuing the legacy of rampant corporate greed that is currently gutting our economy

I guess if that makes him "good", ok...

And as an anthropologist, I can safely say that the theories on evolution and social behavior one studies and believes in have a LOT of relevance to the way one approaches economic policy. You can't just separate out economic policy as some detached, solitary entity from other social institutions.

[brentspeak]

10. I'd like to know precisely what makes Summers an economic "genius"

How does this "genius" manifest itself?

[FrenchieCat]

12. You aren't President of Harvard for 8 years

because you're stupid.
In fact, I venture to say that one gets that position
because of their superior intellect,
no matter if one is not perfect in everyway imaginable.

I understand that this man may have shortcomings,
but I also believe that he has probably learned some valuable lessons,
in his life's work.

Whatever the case, it is Obama who has decided that Summer is up for the job,
and I don't believe that Obama wants to do anything but suceed in his quest
to stabilize the economy and bring us out of the spiraling downward funk
that we are currently in.

I doubt that Barack Obama would choose Summer if he didn't qualify for the job,
and if Summer didn't have quite a bit to offer.

But go ahead and 2nd guess if you wish.......
and hope that what you are doing helps the economy.....
although I tend to doubt it.

[jonnyblitz]

15. Bush was president of the United States for 8 years

are you going to start singing his praises, too? :shrug:

[FrenchieCat]

16. I'm not singing praises......

I'm just being reasonable.

Bush was installed by the Supreme Court in a Coup.....as we know.
That is not how Summer became President of Harvard.

What I will say is that Obama nominated 5 people today, not one.
In addition, Summer is not the Secretary of the Treasury,

I have met him, as he was still President during my daughter's first year at Harvard,
and he spoke to us, new parents, and my husband and I spoke to him after his talk.
I will be the first to certainly say that Summer is not perfect in everyway, as none of us are....

But perhaps in choosing to believe that Summers has learned quite a bit from his past experiences,
I will give him the benefit of the doubt as it appears that our President Elect has.....
that is preferable to judging him as static on the learning curve.
Perhaps Summer will learn much more working with the 3 women and 1 man named as well today;
Summer has seen, as we all have, what the economy has done over the past 8 years....
so I'm sure that is something that he is had has taken into consideration.


Personally,
I'm seeing a decent mix in ideology, backgrounds, and outlook in this team thus far formed,
and in the end, I recognize, and I encourage others to as well, that it is Barack Obama who will make the ultimate decisions.

As an accountant who is seeing first hand Mom and Pop small businesses suffering at this time,
I'm feeling quite comfortable in Prez Elect Obama's choices on this
....and I freely choose to look at the 20 day old glass as filling up rather nicely...
and I believe that what Obama talked about on the campaign trail is exactly what he is going to follow thru on...and that is what is ultimately important to me; the upcoming policies.
And so I will excercise patience and wait....unlike those who want to prejudge and make assessments
based not on the policies to be proposed, but based on history and the presupposition that everyone but those doing the criticizing are static on the learning curve and have nothing new to add,
although, evidently, President Elect appears to think otherwise.

To conclude, for the time being, I'm choosing to go with Obama's judgement as opposed to folks at DU.
So shoot me or sue me. :shrug:

[FrenchieCat]

11. 3 of the 5 are progressives,

3 of the 5 are women, so Summer will learn something about inate abilities.

the Secretary of Treasury is the poorest ever named and has never worked for
a financial institution.

Summer is smart enough to have been named President of Harvard.


and in the end, Obama makes the ultimate decisions.

I'm feeling quite comfortable in Prez Elect Obama's choices on this.