President Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board
November 7, 2008, President-elect Obama announced his 17 member Transition Economic Advisory Board
to help his economic team develop policies to attack the U.S. financial crisis.
During his speech, President-elect Obama said...
"Immidiately after I become President, I'm going to confront this economic crisis head-on by taking all
necessary steps to ease the credit crisis, help hard working families, and restore growth and prosperity."
Roles of the Transition Economic Advisory Board...
Help guide the work of Obama's transition team, working with Obama's Chief of Staff to develop a strong set of policies
to respond to the economic crisis.
Main Priorities when Obama first takes office...
A fiscal stimulus plan that will jump start economic growth... a rescue plan for the middle-class that
invests in immediate efforts to create jobs and provide relief to families with shrinking incomes and life shavings. Further
extension of unemployment benefits for workers who can not find work in an increasingly weakening economy.
Address spreading impact of the financial crisis on other sectors of the economy... Such as small businesses
who are struggling to meet their payrolls, State and Municipal governments facing budget cuts and tax increases. Remember
the financial crisis is increasingly global and requires a global response. Provide help to the struggling auto-industry
and aim to produce fuel efficient cars here in the United States of America.
Review the implementation of this administration's financial program to ensure that the Government's
efforts are achieving their central goal of stabilizing financial markets while protecting tax payers, helping home
owners, and not unduely rewarding the management of financial firms that are receiving goverment assistance. Critical
that the Treasury works closely with the FDIC, HUD, and other government agencies to help familes avoid foreclosure and stay
in their homes.
Lay out a set of policies that will grow our middle class and strengthen our economy in the long term. Key
goals include clean energy, healthcare, education, tax relief for middle-class familes
Members of the Transitional Economic Advisory Board...
Bonior (b. 1945) is former Democratic Congressman from Michigan (November 1976 – January 1995). Bonior led the Democratic
opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. After leaving Congress, Bonier became a professor of labor studies
at Wayne State University. He also served as John Edwards’s 2008 presidential campaign manager. In 2002, he unsuccessfully
ran for governor; Granholm won the Democratic nomination and the state house.
Buffett (b. 1930) is a billionaire investor and the largest shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Forbes magazine
ranked him as the richest man in the world during the first half of 2008; his estimated net worth at that time was $62.0 billion.
Buffett made headlines in 2006 when he announced a plan to give away his fortune to charity, most of it earmarked for the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Buffett favors the inheritance tax, is concerned about the national debt, and
that the world's oil production has peaked. He endorsed Obama over Republican Sen. John McCain.
Buffett warned of
credit risks and derivatives as early as 2003.
Campos (b. 1949) served two terms as a Securities and Exchange Commissioner in the Bush Administration (2002-07).
For four years he was the Commission’s liaison to the international regulatory community. He advocated for the convergence
of standards and for regulation that promotes cross-border transactions.
Prior to being nominated to the Commission,
Campos was one of two principal owner-executives of El Dorado Communications, a radio broadcasting company headquartered in
Houston.
A Harvard Law School graduate, Campos earned a Bachelor of Science from the United States Air Force Academy.
He is currently a partner with the Washington, D.C. law firm Cooley Godward Kronish.
Since 2004, Daley (b. 1938) has served as Midwest Chairman of JP Morgan Chase & Co. He also sits on the Council on
Foreign Relations.
Prior to joining JP Morgan, Daley was President of SBC Communications, Inc. He was Commerce Secretary
in the Clinton Administration (January 1997-July 2000), resigning to serve as chair of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign
(June-December 2000). In 1993, he advised Clinton on NAFTA. In the 1990s, Daley was president and chief operating officer
of Amalgamated Bank of Chicago.
Daley is a graduate of Loyola University in Chicago and of John Marshall Law School.
His brother is the mayor of Chicago. Daley was a national Obama campaign co-chair.
Donaldson (b. 1931) was the 27th Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), serving from February 2003
to June 2005. Donaldson was Under Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration and a special adviser to Vice President Nelson
Rockefeller.
Donaldson was chair of the SEC when it released Wall Street investment firms from capital reserves. Donaldson
founded the Yale School of Management, serving as dean and professor of management studies. A Marine, Donaldson is a graduate
of Yale and a member of its Skull and Bones secret society.
Ferguson (b. 1951) is a former vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In 1997, President
Clinton nominated him to fill an unexpired term ending January 2000. Subsequently, Ferguson was sworn in to a 14-year term.
After being passed over for chairman in 2005 (President Bush appointed Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan), Ferguson offered
his resignation in February 2006.
In 2003, Ferguson became Chairman of the Committee on the Global Financial System
(CGFS), a central bank panel that monitors and examines broad issues related to financial markets and systems. He is currently
CEO of TIAA-CREF, a private financial services company. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard.
Granholm (born 1959 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) was elected Governor of Michigan in 2002 and became the first
woman to hold that office. She was easily re-elected in 2006 (despite a 7 percent unemployment rate). Facing budget shortfalls,
Michigan's credit rating was downgraded from AA to AA- in 2007. In August 2008, her approval rating was 37 percent
In
the 2002 gubernatorial race, she defeated Bonior for the Democratic nomination. In the first Bush Administration, Granholm
became an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. In 1980, she became a U.S. citizen and worked for
John Anderson's campaign for the presidency. She holds a law degree from Harvard and two Bachelor of Arts degrees from Berkeley.
Mulcahy (b. 1952) is chair and CEO of Xerox Corp., Stamford, CT. She is a career employee, joining the company in
1976. Time says she is credited with turning the company around. In June 2008, she became the first woman to be named by her peers as
Chief Executive of the Year; Forbes puts her 10th on its list of the 100 most powerful women.
In 2001, when she was
named the company's first woman CEO, the stock dropped 15 percent. From 1992-1995, Mulcahy was vice president for human resources.
She was president and chief operating officer of Xerox from May 2000 through July 2001. Mulcahy earned a bachelor of arts
degree in English/journalism from Marymount College in Tarrytown, N.Y.
Since 2003, Parsons (b. 1948) has been chairman of the board of Time Warner; he is also a Citigroup board member. From
May 2002 to December 2007 he was Time Warner CEO; he joined the company as President in February 1995 and helped negotiate
the 2000 merger with America Online. Prior to Time Warner, Parsons was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NYC-based Dime
Bancorp; it was acquired by Washington Mutual in 2001.
In 2001, Parsons co-chaired a commission on Social Security.
Parsons followed NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller to D.C. in 1974, working in the Ford Administration. He and Rudy Giuliani
were with the same NYC law firm. A graduate of the University of Hawaii, Parsons received a law degree from Albany Law School.
Pritzker (b. 1959) is part of one of America's wealthiest families; she is estimated to be the 135th on the Forbes 400
list of "America's wealthiest" with an approximate net worth of $2.8 billion. Her grandfather Abram Nicholas Pritzker founded
Hyatt hotels. She is the founder and CEO of Classic Residence by Hyatt, a chain of luxury senior living communities.
Pritzker
was chair of Superior Bank of Chicago in 1991; she remained on the board after stepping down in 1994. The thrift collapsed
in 2001. Pritzker is chair of the Chicago Public Education Fund, the successor to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge; she was
Obama's National Finance Chair.
Pritzker holds a BA in Economics from Harvard and a JD/MBA from Stanford.
Reich (b. 1946) was the 22nd U.S. Secretary of Labor, serving with President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. As Secretary,
he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act and pushed for an increase in the minimum wage. He is currently a professor
at Berkeley University's Goldman School of Public Policy. He is the author of 11 books; his latest is titled Supercapitalism,
The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life. ; he also blogs regularly.
Reich has been on faculty at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government and at Brandeis University. He received
his B.A. from Dartmouth College, his M.A. from Oxford University (where he was a Rhodes Scholar) and his J.D. from Yale Law
School.
Rubin (b. 1938) was the 70th Treasury Secretary, serving in both the first and second terms of the Clinton Administration.
He also directed the National Economic Council, created by Clinton to better coordinate cabinet activities.
As Treasury
Secretary, Rubin opposed regulating derivatives, as did then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Brooksley Born, then-head
of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), advocated for regulation, worried that "opaque trading" could "threaten" the economy. In 1998, Congress froze CFTC regulatory authority; Ms. Born left the following year. In 2000, Congress permanently stripped
the CFTC authority in a rider that Sen. Phil Graham attached to an appropriations bill.
Schmidt (b. 1955) is chairman and CEO of Google. Before joining Google in 2001, he was chairman and CEO of Novell. While
chief technology officer and corporate executive officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc., he led the development of Java. He was
a researcher at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) as well as at Bell Laboratories.
In
2007, PC World named Schmidt first on its list of the 50 Most Important People on the Web. An informal adviser to the Obama
campaign, he began actively campaigning in October. Schmidt supports a "stimulus program that rewards renewable energy and over time attempts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy."
Summers (b. 1954) became the 71st Secretary of the Treasury in July 1999 after serving as undersecretary for international
affairs and deputy secretary of the Treasury. From 1991 to 1993, he was the chief economist of the World Bank. During Summers’s
tenure as Treasury secretary, we used federal budget surpluses to repurchase Treasury debt for the first time since the 1920s.
Summers is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government
and a part-time managing director of the investment and technology development firm D. E. Shaw & Co. Summers had a controversial
term as President of Harvard University.
Tyson (b. 1947) is a professor at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley. She was the Chair
of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration and also served as Director of the National
Economic Council. From 2002 to 2006, Tyson was the first woman Dean of London Business School. Tyson has been a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations since 1987.
She serves on the boards of Morgan Stanley, AT&T Inc. and Eastman
Kodak. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Smith College and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She writes regularly about domestic and international economic policy in mainstream media. Her research focus is global trade.
Villaraigosa (b. 1953) was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 2005, defeating incumbent James Hahn. Villaraigosa became the
first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since Cristobal Aguilar in 1872. Prior to becoming a politician, he was a labor organizer.
His political career includes serving as California State Assemblyman for the 45th District, being the Speaker of the California
State Assembly and representing the 14th District in the Los Angeles City Council.
In 2007, Villaraigosa endorsed
Sen. Hillary Clinton, serving as one of four national co-chairmen her 2008 presidential campaign.
Volcker (b. 1927) is a member of the Trilateral Commission and served as chairman of the Federal Reserve board under Presidents
Carter and Reagan. He served in the Johnson and Nixon Treasury department as deputy under-secretary for monetary affairs.
He was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1975 to 1979.
Under Volker's leadership, the Fed attacked
stagflation by limiting the growth of the money supply. However, in the early 1980s the country experienced a prolonged recession
with unemployment levels at their greatest since the Great Depression. The high interest rates devastated American agriculture;
farmers drove tractors to D.C. in protest.
Volker endorsed Obama in January 2008.
Transition Economic Advisory Board personal info By Kathy Gill, on About.com
