WASHINGTON — President Obama will begin restocking
his economic team Monday with the announcement of Princeton University
professor Alan Krueger as his nominee to chair the White House Council
of Economic Advisors.
If confirmed by the Senate,
Krueger, 50, would be Obama’s third CEA chair, replacing Austan
Goolsbee, who recently left the White House to return to teaching at the
University of Chicago.
The news, confirmed by a White House official, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Krueger
served in the Treasury Department as an assistant secretary for
Economic Policy in the first two years of the Obama administration. He
was also the chief economist at the Labor Department under President
Clinton from 1994 to 1995.
Amid heightened
economic uncertainty and fears of a double-dip recession, Obama’s
economic team has been in a state of flux. Of the president’s original
cadre of top advisors, only Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner
remains.
Geithner recently agreed to serve through the end of Obama’s term.
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©2011
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