The New York Times is unveiling some of Joe’s choices to lead his economic team and it appears to be good news:
-
Joe Biden plans to formally name his choices this week to fill the administration’s top economic policy positions. News of his picks has been trickling out, and it appears he is hoping to assemble a diverse, liberal-leaning team of longtime Democratic figures to guide the country out of the recession.
-
Neera Tanden, a longtime political operative and currently the chief executive at the Center for American Progress, is expected to be chosen to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton labor economist, is believed to be Biden’s pick to lead the Council of Economic Advisers, according to people familiar with the matter.
-
In addition to Rouse, the economic council is expected to include Heather Boushey and Jared Bernstein, economists whose work focuses on reducing inequality, and both of whom served as economic advisers on the Biden campaign.
-
Adewale Adeyemo, who served as a senior international economics adviser under President Barack Obama, is expected to be named as deputy Treasury secretary under Janet Yellen. Biden could make the announcements official as early as Wednesday.
-
Separately, Biden yesterday unveiled an all-female White House communications staff led by Jennifer Psaki, a veteran of the Obama administration and member of the Biden transition team, who will serve as White House press secretary.
-
Symone Sanders, a senior Biden campaign adviser, will be Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s chief spokeswoman and senior adviser.
.
.They continue elsewhere:
The announcement — which will include Mr. Biden’s decision to name Janet L. Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chair, as Treasury secretary — would potentially culminate in several women in top economic roles, including the first Black woman to lead the Council of Economic Advisers and the first Indian-American to lead the Office of Management and Budget. All three jobs require Senate confirmation.
With the picks, Mr. Biden is showcasing a commitment to diversity in his advisers and sending a clear message that economic policymaking in his administration will be shaped by liberal thinkers with a strong focus on worker empowerment as a tool for economic growth.
Two of Mr. Biden’s top economic aides during his presidential campaign, Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, will also be named to the Council of Economic Advisers, which is a three-member team that advises the president on economic policy. Both Ms. Boushey and Mr. Bernstein come from a liberal, labor-oriented school of economics that views rising inequality as a threat to the economy and emphasizes government efforts to support and empower workers.
.The diversity of the team chosen and their expertise make clear that President Elect Biden and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris understand the grave danger that our severe inequality presents and that they understand the dangers of disparity. This team demonstrates that Joe has correctly identified the economic threats that we are facing and has assembled a team well equipped to address them. Even before the pandemic, growing inequality and economic policies that favored investors over workers were grave threats to our economy. There will be either a broadly shared prosperity or there will be none at all. Any economic or health crisis such as the pandemic hurts people of color and minority communities far worse than anybody else. It is well known that wages have not even come close to growing at the rate that productivity has been growing. The Trump Administration is the first administration ever to have fewer people employed at the end of the term than at the beginning. While the nominal unemployment rate is 6.9% which appears to be an improvement, the fact of the matter is that this is largely due to a much lower labor participation rate, many people have left the workforce and are no longer looking for work. A truism is also well-understood: there will be no economic recovery until there is a recovery from the novel coronavirus pandemic. It is expected that vaccines will be manufactured and available for the general public in May or June at the latest.