US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has named Gene Sperling to be director of the National Economic Council (NEC) and his top economic adviser, bringing pragmatism and experience to the role in his latest move to shake up the senior ranks of the White House.
Mr Sperling (52) is an adviser to Treasury secretary Tim Geithner and was pivotal in crafting and negotiating the $858 billion tax compromise enacted last month.
The compromise included pushing for the surprise inclusion of the two percentage point payroll tax cuts and a package of tax breaks for businesses.
He is a seasoned Washington hand, having already served as NEC director during Bill Clinton’s second term as president in the late 1990s and advising Hillary Clinton on economic issues as she ran for president in 2008.
The choice of Mr Sperling signals that Mr Obama is seeking to re-establish the traditional job of the NEC director – to triage the best economic policy options from across the administration and present them to the president, an “honest broker” of sorts.
Larry Summers, his predecessor at the NEC, was known for his grand visions and abrasive style, which some argue were needed to push through the sweeping economic and financial policies rapidly enacted when Mr Obama took office.
However his policies also caused friction within the economic team and with Capitol Hill.
With unemployment still high at 9.4 per cent, the Obama White House will be under pressure to spur much more job creation leading into the 2012 presidential election.
However, it will have less room for manoeuvre when it comes to large-scale programmes to stimulate the economy, given the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives and its distaste for government spending.
Instead, many economic policy decisions will be centred on initiatives tied to deficit reduction, tax reform and regulation.
“Gene is a very rare bird in the sense that he is an expert in economics, economic policy, and politics – the intersection of all three,” Michael Greenstone, head of the Hamilton Project, a Washington think-tank close to the Obama administration, said.
Mr Obama also announced yesterday that Jason Furman would be the principal deputy director of the NEC; Katharine Abraham a member of the Council of Economic Advisers and Heather Higginbottom the deputy director of the office of management and budget, a White House official said. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)
