Friday, February 6, 2009

U.S. News writer: Romney should be on Obama's economic board

Money & Politics blogger for U.S. News and World Report, James Pethokoukis, thinks Obama's new economic advisory board is too ideologically monolithic, and yet again floats the name of a 2012 candidate who's been mentioned for just about every possible cabinet post and czar position ever created.

Names I would liked to have seen on there: Stanford economist John Taylor, FedEx CEO Fred Smith, Mitt Romney, Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers, Lawrence Kudlow, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, economist Arthur Laffer, economist Glenn Hubbard, among others. I just wonder about the diversity of advice this board will provide.

UPDATE!: The WSJ's Jonathan Weisman strenuously disagrees with Pethokoukis' take.

Making good on a promise to name a diverse outside economic advisory panel, President Barack Obama Friday will appoint a slate of business, economic and labor leaders - from conservative economist Martin Feldstein to AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka - to help guide him on the path out of recession....

Some of the panel's members have close Republican ties, such as Mr. Feldstein, a Reagan White House economist, and William H. Donaldson, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission appointed by President George W. Bush. Others have close political ties to the president, including Penny Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, and Robert Wolf, chairman of chief executive of UBS Group Americas. The group also includes Roger W. Ferguson Jr., a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, not chief executive of TIAA-CREF, Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, and Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric.