Obama to Tap Berkeley Prof to Chair Council of Economic Advisers

[jefferson_dem]

Obama to Tap Berkeley Prof to Chair Council of Economic Advisers

November 24, 2008 6:44 AM

From Jake Tapper and George Stephanopoulos:

ABC News has learned that President-elect Obama had tapped University of California -Berkeley economics professor Christina Romer to be the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, an office within the Executive Office of the President.

Romer, a widely respected economist with an expertise on the U.S. economy, will be one of the key economic advisers whom Mr. Obama will introduce to the nation this morning, along with New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner, tapped to be Obama's nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who will serve as the director of the National Economic Council.

Romer and her husband David, also an economist at Berkeley, are members of the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which decides when a recession has officially started or ended.

One highly relevant area of their expertise -- how tax cuts can help stimulate economic growth.

The Council of Economic Advisers is charged with analyzing and interpreting economic developments, appraising programs and activities of the Government, and formulating and recommending national economic policy to promote employment, production, and purchasing power.

Previous chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers include Ben Bernanke, Greg Mankiw, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, and Alan Greenspan.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/11/obama-to-tap-be.html

[DCBob]

1. God, I hope she is an "acceptable" progressive.

Berkeley sounds promising.

[lunatica]

2. Here're her web pages at UC

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/econ/faculty/romer_c.shtml?print

And her personal web page

http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~cromer/index.shtml

Christina D. Romer
Class of 1957-Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics

Fields: Economic history, macroeconomics

Research interests: 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.

more...

She sounds like she specializes in the very problems that ail our economy

[DCBob]

5. She sounds great. I think I have seen her before on some talk show.

Good choice.

[wellst0nev0ter]

3. Man, I Thought It Was Gonna Be Brad Delong

But I guess he's out of the question since he's a Dirty Fucking Hippie Blogger,

[CTyankee]

4. Does this mean that Romer will be Summers' boss?

A woman boss for Larry Summers! Now that's karma and I love it...

[shifting_sands]

6. What does she believe about the state of the economy

You might read one of her lectures to get an idea where she stands on the economy and how it all started down this slope (she cites Kennedy and Johnson for the problems)This is just one of her most recent lectures.

http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~cromer/MacroPolicy.pdf