Christina D. Romer: Obama White House Council of Economic Advisers Head

Christina D. Romer, seen in 1994. President-elect Barack Obama chief economic advisor.

Barack Obama has chosen Christina Romer, an economics professor at University of Califonia, Berkele to be his chief of the all important White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Christina Romer seems to be an excellent choice for the post. Her biography says that she is an expert in "the effects of fiscal policy; identification of monetary shocks; the determinants of American macroeconomic policy; changes in short-run fluctuations over the 20th century; causes of the Great Depression."

Romer seems ideally suited to the challanged the US economy and global economic system faces in the midst of one of the worst financial and economic challenges of the modern era.

Christina Romner UCLA, Berkely Curriculum Vitae :

Christina Romer is the Class of 1957-Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics. She joined the Berkeley faculty in 1988 and was promoted to full professor in 1993. Professor Romer is co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee.

She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of California, Berkeley. She has received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.

She has served as vice president and a member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association. Prior to her appointment at Berkeley, she was an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University from 1985-1988. She received her Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1985.

Romer's most recent economics paper at UCLA focuses on governments tax policies and their macroeconomic effects in fiscal shocks. She will no doubt be vital in creating the new Obama tax plan that will see tax increases for the top 5% of earners and tax cuts for the majority of US workers.

Timothy Geithner: Treasury Secretary of Obama Administation?

Picture: Timothy Geithner

Could this man be one of the most important men in the world on January 20, 2009?

47-year-old Timothy Geithner is the hot favourite to be named by US President elect Barack Obama as United States Treasury Secretary, prominent economists believe.

As the US economy dramatically falters and the New York stock exchange continues to plunge, the pragmatic and youthful looking Geithner (pronounced GITE-ner) would likely bring confidence to Wall Street and global financial markets if named by Obama either Friday afternoon US time or later in the month.

A Reuters-Thompson survey of prominent economist found over half thought that Tim Geithner would be chosen for the important role of navigating the US economy out of the expected recession, with 26 of 48 respondents saying Geithner would be chosen for the job.

Timothy Geithner is the current president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and has been on the front lines of the Global Credit crisis and Wall Street meltdown. Despite his relative youth compared to many in the business, Geithner is a seasoned crisis manager, being at the centre of solving, "almost every major financial blowup of the past decade".

“He has a calm way in the face of whatever he’s facing and an irreverent sense of humor,” former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said of Geithner a few years ago.

Like Obama, Geithner has a reputation for having a cool temperament and seeks consensus when approaching complex problems to solutions. Tim Geithner has also been a voice of alarm in recent years over the possibility of a crisis, that has unfolded in the last few months.

In the last few years Geithner has also closely studied the complex world of credit derivatives (considered financial weapons of mass destruction by Warren Buffett) in an attempt to understand the risks to the wider economy. His skills in this area, along with his history as a financial regulator, also make him the perfect fit to map out a new strategy to build a new regulatory framework in the aftermath of the 2008 economic and credit crisis.

"We’ve seen substantial change in the financial system", Geithner warned almost two years ago.

"With the emergence of a very large universe of leveraged private funds, rapid growth in exposures to more complicated and less liquid financial instruments, all during a period of very low volatility,” said Mr. Geithner in an interview to the New York Times interview around the same time. “This means we know less about market dynamics in conditions of stress.”

Like the Barack Obama"internationalist" brand gained from his four years at school in Indonesia and his Kenyan father, Timothy Geithener also has a similar life story and world view.

As Obama was born in the US and moved overseas at a young age, so to did Geithner. He grew up in Thailand and India, he graduated from the International School in Bangkok, returned to the US and gained a B.A. in government and Asian studies in 1983.

He later achieved an M.A. in International Economics and East Asian Studies, lived across the world including Japan and East Africa and can speak Japanese and Chinese.

He's worked for the IMF and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2001.

He is only a few days younger than Barack Obama, is a registered Democrat and has two young children.

The Economist Endorses Obama

From The Economist:

For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them. The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence.