Later on today, at noon eastern time, Barack Obama will "announce" his economic team -- Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury, Christina Romer as Council of Economic Advisers chair, Lawrence Summers as National Economics Council chair, and Peter Orzag as director of the Office of Management and Budget. High powered! And Rubin-centric, which should be mildly worrisome to progressives except that all have bought into the great left consensus on deficit spending. Another question, which will be taken up later after some reporting, is what happens to Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman, the campaign's economic advisers?
Regarding the White House communications shop, two weekend appointments that didn't surprise -- Robert Gibbs as press secretary and Dan Pfeiffer as deputy communications director -- and one that did: Ellen Moran, currently the executive director of Emily's List, as communications director. I'm surprised that Obama chose someone he has not worked with before for this position, but by all accounts Moran is a talented operative. Mike Crowley notes this may come as a result of a Chicago connection with David Axelrod.
Finally, rumors that Jim Steinberg, previously thought of as a lock for the National Security Adviser post that seems headed Gen. James Jones way, is under consideration for Deputy Secretary of State, presumably working for putative Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Spencer Ackerman breaks down what this means; to my view, this should be reassuring to anyone worried that Clinton will stock the State Department with loyalists; though Steinberg worked in the Clinton administration, he has been an Obama adviser for some time and was one of the first Democratic foreign policy establishment types to call for withdrawal from Iraq in 2004.
--Tim Fernholz
