Paul Volcker is a great addition to Team Obama

I am glad to see that P-E Barack Obama has found a great way to utilize the talent and experience of Paul Volcker. Although he had been talked about for Secretary of Treasury, that did not seem to be the right fit to me. Age is not a primary criterion, but "high energy" of the sort needed for hands-on operation of Treasury did not seem to be what Volcker is all about these days. But part-time head of a special team to oversee the administration's response to the financial and economic crisis with the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board seems to be an ideal fit to me.

In short, after a slow start out of the gate, Team Obama is now firing on all cylinders. Not that any of these announcements actually "fix" anything at this moment, but they do help to instill confidence that Barack will have a great economic team in place on the real Day One of his administration on January 20, 2008.

I am also heartened by the fact that Barack has focused his team on hard-core pragmatic centrists and not the kind of "flighty" idealistic Progressive zealots that were his core supporters during the campaign. His economic team members are people focused on the job to be done rather than mindlessly babbling (and bubbling) "Yes we can! Yes we can!"

-- Jack Krupansky