Obama advisers get bipartisan high marks

— -- President-elect Barack Obama got high marks from the White House to Wall Street on Monday for choosing crafty economic policymakers to lead the nation through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

"Brilliant," "outstanding" and "exceptionally talented" were some of the words used to describe his two top choices — Timothy Geithner, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, for Treasury secretary, and former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers for National Economic Council director — and that came from Republicans.

"It's hard for me to imagine a better team than this one," said Pete Peterson, co-founder of the Blackstone Group, who chaired the search committee that chose Geithner for the New York Fed. Peterson, a veteran of the Nixon administration, said Geithner, 47, "has everything that anyone could ask for" in a Treasury chief.

Of Summers, 53, he said, "If there's a more brilliant economist in the United States, I wouldn't know who that is."

Both Geithner and Summers were lauded by Republicans and Democrats alike as pragmatists who understand how to use the levers of government in the financial sector — something that both sides agree has become increasingly necessary as the recession worsens.

'Pragmatic' pick

In addition to Geithner and Summers, Obama announced two other members of his economic team: Christina Romer, 49, a University of California-Berkeley economist, as chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers; and Melody Barnes, 44, a former counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy, as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Taken together, experts said, the first policy team unveiled by Obama represents:

•Academic smarts. Summers is a former president of Harvard; the others have similar academic backgrounds.

•Practicality over ideology. Geithner is seen as a problem-solver, Peterson said. His strength is "listening carefully to what the problem is, and then deciding on a pragmatic basis what ought to be done about it."