Obama Names Former Fed Chairman to New Advisory Board

President-elect Barack Obama hasn’t taken any vacation days this week as he names critical staff and advisors he will come to rely on during the next four years of his administration. In a press conference Wednesay — the third day in a row he has held a press conference — he named an advisor that will assist him in a new board designed to lead the economy out of crisis and into recovery: a man commonly credited with having led the early 1980s economy into a recession — former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. The former Fed chief served under Jimmy Carter and then under Ronald Reagan. His efforts to lower inflation through increased interest rates earned him criticism, although they quickly paid off.  Volcker, 81, will head Obama’s new Economic Recovery Advisory Board and help the President “create jobs and bring stability to the ailing financial system,” according to an AP report Wednesday. Obama’s office also said Wednesday that Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist, will take the top staff official position on the new board. “I’ve sought leaders who could offer both sound judgment and fresh thinking, both a depth of experience and a wealth of bold new ideas — and most of all, who share my fundamental belief that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers; that in this country, we rise and fall as one nation, as one people,” Obama said at a press conference Monday in Chicago. In addition to tapping Tim Geithner earlier this week as the next Treasury Department secretary, Obama nominated former Harvard president Lawrence Summers as director of the National Economic Council, economist Christina Romer as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, and former executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress Melody Barnes as director of the Domestic Policy Council. Write to Diana Golobay at [email protected].