Obama's Economic Transition Team
David Bonior (Member House of Representatives 1977-2003)
· Warren Buffett (Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway)-will participate via speakerphone
· Roel Campos (former SEC Commissioner)
· William Daley (Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Commerce, 1997-2000)
· William Donaldson (Former Chairman of the SEC 2003-2005)
· Roger Ferguson (President and CEO, TIAA-CREF and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve)
· Jennifer Granholm (Governor, State of Michigan)
· Anne Mulcahy (Chairman and CEO, Xerox)
· Richard Parsons (Chairman of the Board, Time Warner)
· Penny Pritzker (CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt)
· Robert Reich (University of California, Berkeley; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Labor, 1993-1997)
· Robert Rubin (Chairman and Director of the Executive Committee, Citigroup; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1995-1999)
· Eric Schmidt (Chairman and CEO, Google)
· Lawrence Summers (Harvard University; Managing Director, D.E. Shaw; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1999-2001)
· Laura Tyson (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; Former Chairman, National Economic Council, 1995-1996; Former Chairman, President's Council of Economic Advisors, 1993-1995)
· Antonio Villaraigosa (Mayor, City of Los Angeles)
· Paul Volcker (Former Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve 1979-1987)
Some interesting names. Only two truly stand out and matter, or at least matter most. The names you need to think about most are Robert Rubin who some have said is the best Sec. of Treasury this country has had since Alexander Hamilton. He was the Sec. of Treasury for 4 years under Bill Clinton and this country has him to thank for us having a balanced budget during the Clinton years. Mr. Rubin in fact even, well, seemed to of backed Mr. McCain during the election based on how his Op-Ed's read, specifically on the Wall Street Journal Opinion page.
The other name that should matter to you is Paul Volcker. He was the Fed Chairman for the final year of President Carter and the first 7 years of President Reagon's two terms. He is talked about as the man who in fact started the lowering of interest rates and pushing for deregulation before Mr. Reagon had even taken office. It seems he was more liked by Republicans during the Reagan years than Mr. Greenspan under the Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. years.
Their are some key names of some key businesses, one of which (Google CEO) endorsed Mr. Obama. The other thing that bodes well is that he has a balance in the types of business CEO's he is wanting to hear from. You have a major Hotel CEO, the CEO of Xerox that is involved in/deals with most aspects of business relations and services, they deal with every type of company this country has. The other CEO's are involved in the financial world (Citigroup; JP Morgan-both companies having survived this financial mess), entertainment/media business (Time Warner), and the most prominant internet company (Google) that continues to grow and will most likely actually challenge Microsoft someday.
Lawrence Summers, he is being rumored as the top choice for Mr. Obama's Sec. of Treasury. Their is a lot of room to be desired with him depending on who you talk with and/or read but the biggest benefit of Mr. Summers that arguably outweighs everything else is that he's done it before and what we need right now is someone who can step in on day one and have as smooth of a transition as possible. President-Elect Obama seems to be wanting a team that can act instantly and with first hand knowledge of how the White House functions so that their will be no stalling.
This group is, I'm sure, a bit too liberal (especially the fact Robert Reich is part of the group; their is a reason he is at Berkley) for staunch conservatives but the reality is that this is a diverse group who has an extremely good track record of economic growth and balanced budgets under the Clinton years. The other thing that should be noticed, especially when you look at president-Elect Obama's choice for Chief of Staff, is that he is focused on getting started instantly and good governance. We can debate his policies, which is a valid and needed debate but we need to seperate good governance from good policy. Yes, their is a difference.
A couple side notes:
Interesting that he brought in the Mayor of Los Angeles. I don't know that he has much of a track record although he could be interested in knowing about the illegal alien work force? I don't know this Mayor's track record on business and his overall stance so I wont pretend to.
We can be sure that the Governor of Michigan is there so he can get a real sense of what is really going on with the Big Three US car makers. They are asking for ANOTHER $25 Billion with Ford saying they are going to have to cut all funding for research into future development of cars. Let us be honest about the troubles the Big Three are having. They were having trouble before this economic down turn. They have been making inferior cars to Honda and Toyota and even Mazda for years now. They have had image issues. They have product lines with far too many models, especially GM. No one wants to see those jobs lost but it should not be the governments job to bail out companies that have run themselves horribly and failed to think ahead for over 20 years. US car companies are happy about 30+ MPG on the highway just now in 2008 for christ sake. Excuse me? Has it not been almost 10 years since Honda and Toyota have done this? The worst part is that is all they're getting out of Hybrid's. Excuse the diversion off topic.
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4 comments:
There is nothing diverse about most of these names. What he's doing is hiring Clinton's old people which i think is a disasterous move and certainly not the new era of change. I know, i know how highly you think of Robert Rubin....but Alexander Hamilton he is not. also why is Pres Elect Obama having in his circle a treasury Secretary who is most to blame for the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac GSE mortgage loans fiasco that has sent America's economy into freefall. Why should Rubin not feel the heat for this catastrophe if Alan Greenspan is? Why hasnt Henry Wxman hauled the fmr Treasury Secretary and demand answers from him. He was Clinton's chief cheerleader for the 1999 Gramm/Leach act that loosed up the mortgage lending rules. HArd left buisness people and former members of Clinton's adminstration only tells me what i already know. he is going to radically raise taxes, he is going to be in the pockets of big labor, and he'll inhibit free trade.
Your last paragraph about not bailing out the Big 3 Automakers is a double edged sword. Without the bailouts we are looking at 10's of thousands of layoffs. Damaging an already brittle economy. But the fault doesn't lay with the Federal Government but with the 'Big 3' not coming up with a fuel effienct car to compete with foreign imports. This is hardly the 1st time they have been in this position. The oil embargo of 1973-74 had the same impact. No economical U.S. automoblies from our automakers. Chrysler almost went out of business until, in 1979, Lee Iacocca was able to convince Congress to bail out Chrysler. The problem is none of the Big 3 learned from past mistakes, hence they are in the same position today. Some would agrue that Japan can put out a less expensive car because they don't have the labor Unions to drive up wages like the U.S. has. I say Bull. We are capable of manufacturing a fuel efficient car at a resonable price. The greed of the U.S. automakes to make maximum profits got themselves into this jam. The problem? It will continue to happen when the economy finally recovers and gas prices become resonable. Do the Big 3 think that the U.S. will nver go throught an oil crunch again in the future? Why should they care is they keep getting bailed out. And who pays for it? We do.
To Rprez: Hiring a lot of former Clinton ecnomists that oversaw 20 million new jobs is "disasterous"? I'll take the Clinton job growth over any other in modern history; not to give Clinton all the credit mind you. Rubin is far from the "most to blame" for the F&F fiasco let alone the fact that F&F was not in fact the inabler or the starter of this financial mess. The mess would be "less massive" if F&F had not been deregulated in order to buy sub-prime mortages -the degregulation that allowed this happened in 2003. (Actually, a lot of things going back to the 70's allowed this to happen but 2003 was the nail in the coffin.) Republican controlled Congress and president in '03. This mess from an agenda stand point is more the Democrats fault so don't confuse me but the insesant blaming of F&F by Republicans is missing the actual point and the bigger picture.
How do Clinton people that wanted and fought for Free Trade tell you Mr. Obama is going to inhibit free trade? His Chief of Staff is one of the key players that helped get NAFTA and other free trade through Congress. Clinton didn't "radically" raise taxes either. Clinton ran his federal budget with fiscal conservatism (balance).
To Splinter46: It is in fact a double edged sword, one unlike any other that is possible in this country. I couldn't agree more that this is the fault of the Big Three and their inability to learn from past mistakes (sounds like our government doesn't it?). I heard just two days ago that the reason GM is asking for more money is because they're barely running with a few billion over operating costs. So now 3 billion over operating costs isn't enough for the short term? Sell more cars and build better ones and watch the long term fix itself. A problem is that they know the government will bail them out like we did in the past (even before this decade). But the other problem is that not only are we talking about 2.5-3 million directly impacted jobs but we're talking about some 20-30 million car dealers, dealership owners, and mechanics, etc.
I've now been hearing talk of letting them file for bankruptcy re-organization protection. I'd like to hear more about this as it seems like something they deserve to go through.
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