WASHINGTON -- As America fell deeper into the Great Depression after the 1932 presidential election, president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted nothing to do with Herbert Hoover's economic recovery efforts.
FDR, who would not be sworn in until early 1933, stayed out of the economic debate entirely, deciding he would not act until he became president.
Not so with president-elect Barack Obama, who last week shifted from the hands-off posture of "we have only one president at a time" to "the work starts today, because the truth is, we don't have a minute to waste."
Not only did Obama give the green light to his newly named economic team and Democratic leaders of Congress to begin preparing a stimulus package that he intends to sign the day he takes office, but his top advisers had already been working behind the scenes with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Bush administration to fashion the Citigroup bank's huge rescue plan.
Obama's Treasury secretary-designate Timothy Geithner and former Treasury secretary and Citigroup board member Robert Rubin -- with Obama's approval -- had been in constant contact with Paulson as they worked out the biggest bailout plan to date, in an attempt to save Citigroup from going under in a sea of bad debts.
All of this took place with the knowledge and full approval of President Bush, who encouraged Obama's more activist approach to the economic turmoil that now grips the nation. Bush has been briefing Obama on the day-to-day decision-making, and told reporters last week that "anytime we're to make a big decision during the transition, he will be informed, as will his team. It's important for the American people to know that there is close cooperation."
Obama's economic team consists of a curious mix of more center-leaning types like Geithner and former Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers, who will head the White House's National Economic Council, and others who fall decidedly on the liberal end of the political spectrum.
Geither and Summers are proteges of Rubin (a co-worker of Paulson's at Goldman Sachs) a thinker very much in favor of free trade, deficit reduction and growth deregulation.
As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and thus vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Geithner has worked closely with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and with Paulson in the bailout policies that the Bush administration has made thus far.
Rarely, if at all, has an incoming administration been more intertwined, relationship-wise, with the outgoing administration on economic policy-making.
Several important position shifts have been signaled in all of this during the past week -- shifts that suggest Obama may be more flexible in some of his economic policies than anyone thought possible.
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