Volcker Tapped for Advisory Role

Headlining President-Elect Obama's third consecutive day of economic team rollout is Paul Volcker. Per the WSJ:

President-elect Barack Obama will appoint former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday to be the chairman of a new White House advisory board tasked with helping to lift the nation from recession and stabilize financial markets, Democratic officials say. [...]

The board's mission won't be to supplant the policy-making role of the Treasury Department and other agencies, but to give Mr. Obama an official forum for getting expert advice outside the normal bureaucratic channels. It will give briefings to the president.

The panel, called the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, is modeled on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board established by then-President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, at the height of the Cold War, when officials worried that that the existing bureaucratic structure was inadequate to help the U.S. keep pace with the Soviet threat. The financial crisis has drawn similar worries that the government isn't properly organized to monitor and respond to modern financial markets. [...]

The board's tasks will be broad: to help design and implement short-term programs to jump-start the economy, raise wages and living standards and confront the housing crisis. It will also address the delicate task of bolstering Washington's oversight of the financial markets in the wake of a Wall Street collapse that has taken down many of its most venerable institutions.

I'm glad to see that Obama is going reap the benefit of Mr. Volcker's knowledge and leadership. This combined with the two prior economic team announcements puts out the notice that the Obama administration is organized and ready to go in a transition that is already remarkable in many ways. [via]