CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama moved swiftly on Thursday to fill his administration and form his response to the economic crisis. Mr. Obama scheduled his first post-election visit to the White House and convened an economic advisory board to meet here amid signs of a deteriorating financial outlook. With the global economy on a knife’s edge, and labor figures on Friday very likely to show mounting American job losses, the financial markets, foreign leaders and even the Bush administration are looking to Mr. Obama for signs of how he will manage the crisis. In responding, Mr. Obama must strike a delicate balance between cooperating with an unpopular president whose policies he campaigned to change, and the inclination to wait until he takes charge in two and a half months to prescribe his own remedies. Adding to the pressure were steep drops in world financial markets on Thursday; the Dow Jones industrial average alone fell 443 points, or nearly 5 percent, compiling a two-day lo...
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