President Barack Obama

It is expected that on Monday President-elect Barack Obama will announce the names of his national security team, leading with Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. It is being reported that former President Bill Clinton agreed to publicly reveal the names of hundreds of thousands of donors to his foundation to pave the way for his wife to secure the coveted post of Secretary of State.

It is believed that other selections for Obama’s national security team include the current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, who is a Republican. Also to be named are retired Marine Corps General James Jones as White House national security adviser, and Susan Rice, who has been advising Barack Obama foreign policy matters, as. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The priorities and challenges facing the new Obama administration and its national security team are daunting. These include extricating American troops from Iraq, confronting the growing strength of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, while repairing damage to the international image of the United States incurred during the Bush administration.

Karl Rove offered praise for Barack Obama in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. This is the same Karl Rove who was said to be the “political brain” behind George W. Bush and the mastermind of his two victorious presidential campaigns. Rove wrote that President-elect Barack Obama has assembled a “first rate economic team that has provided surprisingly positive clarity.”

The selection by Barack Obama of New York Fed Chairman Timothy Geithner for Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers, the former Clinton-era Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard University, as chief of the National Economic Council was especially lauded by Rove in his op-ed piece.

Rove wrote that, “the announcement of Mr. Obama’s economic team was reassuring. He’s generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers. Investors, workers and business owners can only hope that, over time, this new administration’s economic policies bear more of their market-oriented imprint.”

The choice by Obama of Berkley Economics Professor Christina Romer as his pick to head up his team of economics advisers also won Rovian praise.

If Barack Obama is already getting the thumbs of from Karl Rove, could Rush Limbaugh be next? Probably not a chance of that, but Karl Rove’s piece in the Wall Street Journal clearly shows that Barack Obama is moving forward in his transition in a politically skillful manner.

It is being reported that Robert Gates, currently Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, will retain his post for a transition period of about one-year. It is expected that a formal announcement will made next week by President-elect Barack Obama when he discloses his choices for his administration’s national security team.

Keeping Gates at Defense will provide Obama with a defense secretary who has garnered support from both sides of the aisle in Congress. Gates also has considerable experience with foreign leaders throughout the world and he is highly respected by the top military brass. Under a President Obama, Secretary Gates will have to transition from serving the President who initiated the Iraq war to serving under Barack Obama, who opposed the war from the beginning and has pledged to end it and bring the American troops home.

Barack Obama has apparently decided to set aside concerns that he would upset anti-war supporters after conducting an election campaign in which he made his consistent opposition to the Iraq war one of his key issues.

Barack Obama is only the President-elect while George Bush remains officially U.S. president until January 20, 2009. However, as far as the world’s political and business leaders are concerned, Barack Obama is the one in charge. Bush is seen as a lame duck while the global economic crisis worsens, and his statements on the American financial collapse are viewed as increasingly irrelevant. However, when Obama holds a news conference or announces a senior appointment, the whole world listens with riveted attention.

It appears that the American people and most of the world cannot wait until the Bush presidential term is finally history, and Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th president. What is also clear, however, is everyone is looking to Obama to provide leadership that will lead America out of its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Judging by his initial responses, it seems apparent that Barack Obama has no illusions as to the depth of the challenge and responsibility he is now assuming.

Paul Volcker, 81, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve during the 1980s, has been appointed by President-elect Barack Obama to serve as head of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. The announcement was made at a Chicago news conference. Obama indicated that the board would include as a top staff official Austan Goolsbee, who is a University of Chicago economist.

Volcker has experience with economic crises, having led the Fed under presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 to 1987. As a central banker, Volcker raised interest rates and restricted the money supply, and during that period America experienced one of its worst recessions.

Paul Volcker helped bring inflation under control, and his policies led to three decades of low inflation, a turnaround from the 1980s when inflation was out of control. “He pulls no punches,” Obama said of Volcker. “He seems to be fairly opinionated.”

On the same day that Obama announced the appointment of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, the government revealed that jobless claims had remained very high, while American consumers were cutting back on their spending. The economic crisis continues to get worse.

President-elect Barack Obama has announced the names of his top economic advisers at a Chicago news conference. He indicated they would manage a massive economic stimulus package designed to save the U.S. economy from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression since the 1930s.

The names and positions announced include:

Christina Romer, co-director, National Bureau of Economic Research

Timothy Geithner, currently the president of the New York Federal Reserve, will serve as the next U.S. treasury secretary.

Lawrence Summers, himself a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, will be appointed to become the new head of the White House’s national economic council.

Christina Romer of the National Bureau of Economic Research was selected to chair Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

During the Chicago press conference, President-elect Obama said he had selected a team that would offer new ideas for confronting the global economic crisis.

Barack Obama stated very emphatically, “We need a big stimulus package that will jolt the economy back into shape. I look forward to working closely with them in the months ahead. And that work starts today, because the truth is, we don’t have a minute to waste. Our financial markets are under stress. While we can’t underestimate the challenges we face, we also can’t underestimate our capacity to overcome them.”

The announcement of Timothy Geithner to head Treasury sent the Dow Jones index up sharply. Geithner, who has also been vice chairman of the interest rate setting Federal Open Market Committee, was very involved in the bailouts of insurance giants AIG and Bear Stearns, and in the decision to allow Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt.

Obama’s top strategist, David Axelrod, said Geithner was “intimately involved with the situation now in his role as president of New York Fed. By temperament and experience, he’s the right man to lead the Treasury now.” Apparently, the stock markets and financial community agree with Axelrod.

At a Chicago news conference announcing his economic team, President-elect Barack Obama urged rapid passage of an economic stimulus bill by Congress, which would provide assistance to the three domestic automakers, among other financial measures.

With 57 days before he is inaugurated as the nation’s 44th president, Barack Obama warned about the ailing economy, saying that, “the economy is likely to get worse before it gets better.” He added that, “most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year.” Obama also expressed surprise at the big three auto makers, saying that he was surprised they did not have at present any well-conceived plans for recovery prior to asking Congress to approve their urgent request for $25 billion in emergency loans.

It is being reported that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, age 61, is to be selected by President-elect Barack Obama as his commerce secretary. Richardson would be the first prominent Hispanic to be appointed to the Obama cabinet. As with other Obama appointees, he was an opponent in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary before withdrawing and becoming one of the first former rivals to endorse Barack Obama.

I t is being speculated that the Richardson nomination, along with others, will be announced by Obama some time after the Thanksgiving holiday. Prior to being elected New Mexico Governor, Bill Richardson had a prominent role in the Bill Clinton administration, serving as UN ambassador and later as energy secretary. In addition, President Clinton had Bill Richardson travel on several important diplomatic missions, including direct talks with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and with officials from North Korea involving the nuclear issue. Having been close to Bill Clinton, the fact that he threw his support behind Barack Obama in the Democratic primary instead of Hillary Clinton was viewed by many as a turning point in the Obama presidential campaign. Richardson also actively campaigned for Obama against John McCain, especially among Hispanic voters.

As the economic news goes from bad to disastrous, and the lame-duck President Bush becoming increasingly irrelevant, the world is already turning to President-elect Barack Obama to lead America out of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, which he plans to do in part by creating 2.5 million jobs through a major public works program that includes rebuilding roads and bridges and modernizing schools while developing alternative energy sources and more efficient automobiles.

President-elect Barack Obama said, “These aren’t just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis. These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long.”

Obama’s objective is to steer his infrastructure investment plan rapidly through Congress, facilitated by assistance from both political parties, after Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation’s 44th president on January 20, 2009. In his radio broadcast, Obama indicated that he sees 2.5 million new jobs added by 2011 if his plan is adopted. With the U.S. economy shedding jobs at an alarming rate, it is clear that a jobs creation program is a top priority for the incoming Obama administration.

It is reported that president-elect Barack Obama has chosen Timothy Geithner, currently head of the New York Federal Reserve, to be his Treasury secretary, at a time when U.S. financial markets are descending with alarming rapidity. The 47-year-old Geithner has been speculated on as one of Obama’s top picks for Treasury since the November 4 election.

The stock market, after suffering unprecedented losses earlier in the week, entered a rally with the news that Timothy Geithner would be heading the Treasury Department. Many in the financial community view Timothy Geithner as the ideal person to spearhead the incoming Obama administration’s response to the global economic crisis.

The news of Geithner’s appointment comes at a time when reports suggest that Citibank may be up for sale, after suffering staggering losses. Meanwhile, the domestic auto companies continue to stand on a cliff, being a knife’s edge from insolvency.