Obama unveils his new economic team
- 00:01:07
- ITN
Obama unveils his new economic team
Barack Obama has introduced the team that will help him navigate the global financial crisis. The US president-elect named Timothy Geithner, 47, the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, as his Treasury secretary. Lawrence Summers, 53, a former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, will be director of the National Economic Council. Mr Obama also named economics professor Christina Romer as head of his Council of Economic Advisors and police adviser Melody Barnes as head of his Domestic Policy Council. The scope of the economic crisis has widened in the 20 days since the Democrats' White House win. Car companies have warned they are short of cash, unemployment has risen and the government has injected $20 billion into Citigroup. Mr Obama said his administration would honour the commitments made by President George W Bush's team to address this crisis. And he said his team was already working on the details of a package to save or create 2.5 million jobs and urged the next Congress to act on it immediately in early January. The president-elect said: "These extraordinary stresses on our financial system require extraordinary policy responses. "We have to make sure that the stimulus is significant enough that it really gives a jolt to the economy. "I want to see it enacted right away. It is going to be of a size and scope that is necessary to get this economy back on track."
ITN | November 24, 2008
