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Urgency Drives Obama Transition

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The New York Times

Published: November 7, 2008

CHICAGO - President-elect Barack Obama moved swiftly on Thursday to fill his administration and form his response to the economic crisis. He scheduled his first post-election visit to the White House and convened an economic advisory board to meet here amid signs of a deteriorating financial outlook.

With the global economy on a knife's edge, and labor figures today likely to show mounting American job losses, the financial markets, foreign leaders and even the administration are looking to Obama for signs of how he will manage the crisis.

In responding, Obama must strike a delicate balance between cooperating with an unpopular president whose policies he campaigned to change, and the inclination to wait until he takes charge in two and a half months to prescribe his own remedies. Adding to the pressure were steep drops in world financial markets on Thursday, with the Dow Jones industrial average alone falling 443 points, or nearly 5 percent, compiling a two-day loss of nearly 1,000 points.

Moving quickly on the transition, Obama announced his selection of Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief of staff because, Obama said, he has "deep insights into the challenging economic issues that will be front and center for our administration."

In a long list of forthcoming appointments, aides said, Obama was acting with the greatest urgency toward choosing a Treasury secretary, and was said to be considering Lawrence Summers, who held the post during the Clinton administration, and Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

No incoming president in modern times has been so pressured to begin governing, in effect, before he is sworn into office. With that in mind, Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden will meet with members of a new economic advisory board today.

The group includes the billionaire investor Warren Buffett; Summers and his predecessor as Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin; Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman; and Eric Schmidt, the chief executive officer of Google.

Participants also include Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan.

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