Obama adds econ advisers, says 'help on the way' (and defends Clinton appointments)

[onehandle]

Source: AP

CHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama pledged on Wednesday to have an economic plan ready for action on the nation's financial crisis on his first day in office. "Help is on the way," he declared. He also said his Cabinet would "combine experience with fresh thinking" and pushed back against criticism that he was recycling former Clinton administration officials as he builds his new economic team.

In his third news conference on the economy in as many days, Obama announced he had chosen former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head a new White House panel to help create jobs and bring stability to the ailing financial system.

snip...

Fifty-five days before his inauguration, Obama defended his selection of former Clinton officials to help run his administration. "The American people would be troubled if I selected a treasury secretary or a chairman of the National Economic Council at one of the most critical economic times in our history who had no experience in government whatsoever," Obama said.

"What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking," he said. "But understand where the vision for change comes from. First and foremost, it comes from me. That's my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure then that my team is implementing."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081126/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_economy

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Very reassuring

Obama is also being very Presidential. He's letting people know what he is doing and what will happen on January 20.

[apnu]

2. Smart move on Obama's part.

I'm glad he's come out and reminded everybody that these appointments work for him and that he has the final say, and responsibility, for what happens. He decides the course, they set it in motion. Its refreshing to actually see a Presidential leader, after 8 years of Bush's "vacation" Presidency.

Bravo Mr. President-Elect! Bravo!

[progressivebydesign]

3. why should he have to "defend" his Clinton-era appointees? Who else would have this experience?

The Clinton-era officials have hands on experience in cleaning up after the disastrous policies of the Bush Cabal. They dragged the Country out of the abyss, albeit not as dire, after the first Bush. I am thrilled with all of Obama's appointments. I have no clue WHO exactly these complainers think he should be choosing, but he's done a great job.

[HomerRamone]

4. Robert Reich, Paul Krugman,

anybody who was against deregulation and/or the war from the start--people who were RIGHT all along rather than wrong. But just as with pundits, the ones who were wrong keep the jobs...

[november3rd]

10. You're right...

... still, you have to believe, or at least hope, that given his smarts, background and vision, he's got some calculated reason like, calming the conservatives and getting them on board, or, not reinventing the wheel when it comes to working out of an economic crisis. I'm sure Krugman and Reich will be able to make as much input as Obama wants from wherever they're situated--inside or outside the government.

[KakistocracyHater]

13. so long as he knows he'll have to push

those around him & not the reverse, HIS vision, NOT theirs, I hope he's being honest...& is intent on taking a different direction. Macro-thinking doesn't automatically come from holding a gov job, either, it comes from the person's philosophy/world view, personal habits.

[stillcool]

11. Robert Reich is...

and has been an advisor for some time. What was his position in the Clinton Administration?

[high density]

12. lol

:rofl:

[HomerRamone]

14. Secretary of Labor

I'm missing the joke...

[glitch]

5. You have been a citizen under a Bush Government too long.

Obama was correct to respond, we don't need another "decider" who thinks the nicest thing about being president is he doesn't have to explain his actions.

[awoke_in_2003]

7. agreed. nt

[SleeplessinSoCal]

6. another downside to having so few Democratic PsOTUS. Too many Republican exstaffers

[RedEarth]

8. Outstanding...great move by Obama

[gratuitous]

9. Obama's a better man than I am

I would have had to bite my tongue until it bled to keep from answering, "Well, I suppose I could have hired another former horse show judge to run a critical federal agency, but since I don't move in those circles I don't know any personally."

[threadkillaz]

15. PV is 81 years old.

That's 16 years past normal retirement age. A Carter leftover.

Oh, I get it. "Change" as in "changing adult diapers"???

Abolish the Fed. That is the answer, not appoint its ex-chairmans.

[Odin2005]

16. If the Fed is abolished it's right back to having fanacial panicks every 20 years like clockwork.

That's why the Fed was established in the first place. All these conspiracy theories surrounding the Fed are BS invented by anti-Semitic Libertarian idiots.

[girl gone mad]

17. We've had two panics in the last decade.

Maybe it's time to try something new.

:shrug:

[Odin2005]

18. The only true panic we have had in the 1800s sense since the Depression is right now.

That is almost 80 years. When I speak of panics I speak of the massive fanancial panics that occured with clockwork regularity one a generation during the 1800s after Jackson killed the Bank of the US. The only things that match up to the 19th Century panics in sheer massiveness in the last 100 years is the Great Depression and the current economic crisis. This current crisis is more comparable to the financial panic that triggered the so-called "Long Depression" of the late 1880s and early 1890s then it is to the Great Depression.

[unkachuck]

19. from a purely....

....laymans' point of view, why don't we scrap this cheesy economic system and end 'Great Depressions' altogether?....our current installment of economic collapse was solely manufactured by wall street and banking con-men, not adam smiths invisible finger....


....let's have a show hands....who wants to continue to hand our economic future and well-being over to a crooked band of high-tech thieves?