President-elect Barack Obama is meeting with his team of economic experts today to discuss the first steps toward healing a the weakened U.S. economy as he continues the formible task of putting together a new administration.
“We’re not starting from nowhere,” said Lawrence Summers, a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and one of the 17 members of Obama’s transition economic advisory board who will attend the meeting. “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 attending the meeting include Richard Parsons, chairman of Time Warner; Roger Ferguson, president and CEO of TIAA-CREF; Robert Reich, former secretary of the Department of Labor; Robert Rubin, chairman and director of the executive committee at Citigroup and a former secretary of the Department of Treasury. Warren Buffett will participate via speakerphone.
Immediately following the meeting, Obama will hold his first news conference as president-elect.
Since he was elected president Tuesday, Obama has been meeting with his transition team and receiving daily intelligence briefings.
Yesterday, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a fellow Chicagoan known for his take-no-prisoners attitude, was named White House chief of staff. The choice of Emanuel is a significant departure from the soft-spoken, low-key aides that “No-Drama Obama” surrounded himself with during the campaign, writes the Associated Press. And transition chief John Podesta, like Emanuel, is a former top aide to President Clinton and a tough partisan infighter, though less bombastic than the new chief of staff.
Obama would make any any personnel announcements today.
Earlier today, Obama and his wife, Michelle, attended a parent-teacher conference at the University of Chicago Lab School where their daughters, Malia and Sasha, are students.
Deborah Creighton Skinner is the Editorial Director at BlackEnterprise.com