Obama team has vast rescue plan

Source: Agencies  |   2008-11-25  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

UNITED States President-elect Barack Obama has named his economic team and may call for the next Congress to quickly pass a massive stimulus plan that would dwarf even his campaign proposals to salvage the country's financial wreckage.

Obama spoke in Chicago yesterday amid increasing calls for him to assert himself well before he takes office January 20 in the midst of the most severe US financial crisis in eight decades.

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod confirmed that the president-elect named Timothy Geithner, the New York Federal Reserve president, as his treasury secretary. Wall Street stocks jumped last Friday when word of Geithner's appointment began to leak.

Geithner will team with Lawrence Summers, a treasury secretary under former president Bill Clinton and former Harvard University president, who will take over the National Economic Council.

Obama also named New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as commerce secretary, adding a prominent Hispanic and one-time Democratic presidential rival to his Cabinet. Richardson served as United Nations ambassador in the Clinton administration and later as energy secretary.

The troika will confront an economic crisis that continues to deepen in spite of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal emergency spending in recent weeks.

Top aides said Obama wanted Congress to use its large Democratic majority when it convenes January 6 to prepare tax cuts for low and middle-income earners as part of the massive government intervention designed to pull the country out of its frightening economic nosedive.

Before winning the presidency on November 4, Obama had said he looked to create a US$175 billion stimulus package. The new one is expected to be significantly larger.