By AMY HARDER
President Obama signed an executive order today creating a new Economic Recovery Advisory Board made up of 15 leaders from the private sector who will advise him on his plans for economic recovery. The list includes former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William H. Donaldson, General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt, Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens and SEIU's Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger. (Complete list available after the jump.) Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker will be the board's chair, and White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee will be the board's staff director and chief economist.
"I'm not interested in groupthink, which is why the board reflects a broad cross-section of experience, expertise and ideology," Obama said at the press conference announcing the appointments. He added that the board is intended to allow White House policymakers to here "voices that come from beyond the echo chamber of Washington, D.C."
Some members clearly have a stake in how the stimulus bill turns out and Obama's agenda overall. Immelt's Caterpillar, for instance, was among the companies reporting sky-high job losses in January (22,000). Burger's SEIU was one of the many labor groups supporting Obama in the campaign and has been advocating hard for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill designed to make it easier for unions to organize that has triggered intense debate between business and labor interests. The board has more conservative representation as well, including Donaldson, who served as SEC chairman under George W. Bush, and Harvard professor Martin Feldstein, who served in Ronald Reagan's administration.
A complete list of the members is available after the jump.
In addition to Donaldson, Immelt, Owens, Burger and Martin, the following were named:
Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. President and CEO, TIAA-CREFRobert Wolf, Chairman and CEO, UBS Group Americas
David F. Swensen, CIO, Yale University
Mark T. Gallogly, Founder and Managing Partner, Centerbridge Partners L.P.
Penny Pritzker, Chairman and Founder, Pritzker Realty Group
John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
Monica C. Lozano, Publisher and Chief Executive Officer, La Opinion
Charles E. Phillips, Jr., President, Oracle Corporation
Richard L. Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO
Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Dean, Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley
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