Obama to meet economic advisors after grim jobs data
Fri Nov 7, 2008 9:19am EST
reuters.com
( Obama's already at work Dave, saving us from Bush with socialism. )
By Deborah Charles and Caren Bohan
CHICAGO (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama was to meet his economic advisers on Friday as new U.S. jobless figures underlined the enormity of the task confronting him to stabilize an economy that is shedding jobs fast.
Job losses in October were worse than feared, with employers cutting payrolls by 240,000, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate shot up to 6.5 percent from 6.1 percent in September, its highest since 1994.
After two days in which Wall Street has plunged around 10 percent since Tuesday's election, Obama will hear from economists, businessmen and policy experts on how to deal with the worst U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Obama, who won a sweeping victory in Tuesday's election in part because of his economic promises, has assembled a 17-member transition economic advisory board. He must now decide who to put on his White House team and how to implement promised measures.
The board includes former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, former Labor secretary Robert Reich, Google Inc chairman Eric Schmidt, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and billionaire Warren Buffett.
After the meeting, at 2:30 p.m. EST, Obama will face the news media for the first time since the election, which will make him the first black American president when he is inaugurated on January 20.
NO PERSONNEL ANNOUNCEMENTS
In addition to the economy, Obama will likely face questions about who he plans to appoint to various Cabinet posts and other aspects of the transition.
But an aide to Obama, Stephanie Cutter, said he would not make any announcements on personnel appointments.
Obama has acknowledged the urgency of revitalizing the economy and he is expected to quickly make key appointments to his economic team.
The market is looking closely at who Obama will name as Treasury Secretary. Top candidates for the job included Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Summers and Volcker.
A Reuters poll of economists found 26 of 48 respondents thought Geithner would be chosen for the job, while Summers came second with 14 votes.
Whoever takes the Treasury job will guide the $700 billion economic bailout package and the regulatory reform needed to prevent a repeat of the current crisis.
Obama and his economic advisers will likely talk about the $700 billion package and also about a possible second fiscal stimulus package the Democratic-run Congress is expected to address when it returns to Washington.
"We expect President-elect Obama to move decisively to address economic stress," said Jan Hatzius, senior economist at Goldman Sachs. "We suspect he will support even more fiscal stimulus than the $200 billion we have penciled into our forecast. Congress could move on this even before the change-over on January 20."
The economic advisers may also discuss how to help U.S. automakers, who are facing an unprecedented financial crisis due to the global credit crunch. The automakers are lobbying for up to $50 billion in additional aid.
(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin in Washington, Pedro Nicolaci da Costa in New York and Caren Bohan in Chicago, editing by Alan Elsner)
© Thomson Reuters 2008. |
