Ms Romer is slated to be the new head of the Council of Economic affairs. She is in for a challenging task ahead not only because the state the economy is in but also because of the forceful economic team she will have to handle. She is not known as a confrontational candidate. Obama has also named his future treasury secretary, which was not a secret now in any case. Timothy Geithner is a natural candidate with his vast experience. The president-elect named Melody Barnes, formerly executive vice president for policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, to be Director of the Domestic Policy Council.
The council does not have any political powers as such but is highly influential in formulating of policies and affecting policy decisions. Previous high profile heads like Martin Feldstein and Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the Federal Reserve have been known to be influential.
Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr., a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute and a former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, while talking of her said she is “a very highly regarded economist and a first-rate academic,” and emphasized that as chair of the CEA, she will find herself among some strong personalities. “With big guns and players like Summers and Geithner,” Mr. O’Driscoll said, “She’ll have to learn to get sharp elbows.”
Ms. Romer is a well known professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, and she has been teaching there since 1988.her husband David is also awell known economist in his own right.
Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at Berkeley and a colleague of Ms. Romer’s for almost 20 years, said, “There will be a lot of loud voices in the room where the Obama economic policies are hammered out,” he said. “Chris can hold up her end in that kind of situation.”
