Obama meeting with economic advisers, reporters

CHICAGO -- On a day filled with fresh reports of economic bad news, Barack Obama is meeting with his economic advisers and will hold his first news conference as the nation's president-elect.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden also is participating in the session with the diverse group of economists, academics and business leaders who advised Obama during his campaign. They include William Donaldson, a Republican who headed the Securities and Exchange Commission during President Bush's first term, and Robert Reich, Labor secretary for President Clinton.

Also in the group are CEOs Richard Parsons of Time-Warner and Eric Schmidt of Google, and Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard. Summers, who was Treasury secretary under Clinton, is a candidate to return to that job in the Obama administration.

Obama's meeting on the economy, just three days after his election, shows that he "understands the gravity of the situation," said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics. Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm, said Obama's move "reassures the markets" that the president-elect "intends to hit the ground running."

"We're not starting from nowhere," Summers told NBC's Today program Friday. "Throughout his campaign the president-elect has been talking about what we need to do. We need to put the middle class at the center of the policy approach in a way that it hasn't been these last years."

The meeting comes after the stock market plummeted more than 400 points on both Wednesday and Thursday, although it was rallying slightly Friday. Also Friday: The Labor Department announced the jobless rate had surged to 6.5%, the highest in more than 14 years. The number of people drawing unemployment benefits hit a 25-year high, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The question-and-answer session with reporters is set for 2:30 p.m. ET.

Obama began to assume the burdens and privileges of the presidency Thursday: The Democrat received a classified intelligence briefing, confirmed the appointment of Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and returned congratulatory calls from world leaders.