Obama Transition In High Gear; Experience, Not Change, Runs Through Picks

Pundits are comparing it to 1932 and the transition between President Hoover and President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, at least in terms of urgency. The transition team clearly feels the urgency caused by the economy: only three days after the election, President-election Barack Obama announced a 17-member Transition Economic Advisory Board. It's a who's who of Democratic insiders, sprinkled liberally with Clinton appointees.

Some of those names may have been trial balloons, like Lawrence Summers. He will head up the National Economic Council, not the Treasury Department, possibly due to a rapid and vocal rejection from Democratic women. Instead, the Treasury nod goes to Timothy Geithner, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And a veteran of the Clinton Treasury Department. (Summers was his boss.)

Rather than espousing change, the picks are, for the most part, Washington, D.C. insiders. For example:

It was Geithner who engineered J.P. Morgan's buyout of troubled Bear Stearns with a $29 billion loan from his New York Federal Reserve bank -- the first of the government's serial interventions in the markets -- and he has remained a key figure in efforts that followed.

And many are elected officials who will have to resign to accept the new job.

An early pick, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) for chief of staff, set the tone. Emanuel is a veteran of the Clinton administration (and the nomination campaign). He also served a short time on the board of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation ("Freddie Mac"), an institution racked by scandal and enmeshed in the current financial crisis.

Four other probables (with three resignations needed):

• Secretary of State, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), a 15-year veteran of Beltway Politics
• Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), a 30-year veteran of Beltway Politics
• Attorney General, Eric Holder, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton Administration and a 20-year Washington, D.C. veteran
• Secretary of Homeland Security, Gov. Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), a Washington outsider

The economy is, by necessity, the front-burner issue for the transition team. Domestic stock values have dropped nearly 50 percent from their historical highs of almost a year ago and more than 20 percent in the three weeks since Obama's election.

On Sunday, the government agreed to bail out yet another bank: Citigroup. The price tag? Another $320 billion. But this rescue will put a lot of pressure on Congress and Obama to help save auto industry manufacturing jobs.