Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board To Hold First Meeting

WASHINGTON — The prime office space in the southeast corner of the Treasury building sits vacant four months into the Obama administration. Its ample desk is empty, the walls are bare. Occupants from nearby offices occasionally gather there when in need of a conference table, but otherwise, it's a den of inactivity.
The assigned occupant? Paul Volcker, the towering former chairman of the Federal Reserve and now chairman of President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Like Volcker, the 16-member advisory board, announced with fanfare by Obama in February, has been largely out of public view despite the administration's frenetic attention to the economy.
On Wednesday, its members will make their first public, joint appearance since they gathered at the White House on Feb. 6. The focus of the board's presentation is expected to be energy and jobs.
Volcker was one of Obama's early supporters in the presidential campaign, lending some high voltage to a candidate who was working to convince voters that he had the experience to serve in the White House. As the unpaid chairman of the advisory board, Volcker has been within the president's reach, but not in the inner circle that includes Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, chief White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers and others who meet with Obama daily in the Oval Office. LinkHere