Economic Advisor

Beryl W. Sprinkel Economic advisor to Reagan Beryl W. Sprinkel, 85, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration and who helped guide the administration's response to the October 1987 stock market crash, died Aug. 22 at a nursing home in Beecher, Ill. He had Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, a rare neuromuscular disease. Sprinkel, protege of conservative economics guru Milton Friedman, taught economics at the University of Chicago and was executive vice president and economic advisor at the Harris Trust and Savings Bank in Chicago for nearly 30 years.

L. William Seidman, who led the federal response to the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., died Wednesday at a hospice in Albuquerque, N.M., of complications from pneumonia. He was 88.

Oops, it seems that many on President Obama's team, including those seeking to save the American automobile industry, do not actually drive vehicles from the American automobile industry. According to a study by the Detroit News and a White House parking lot survey by Politico.com, neither do Obama's White House staffers. Before leaving for Europe (where the Secret Service had pre-placed Obama's new armored Cadillac), the president dished out rhetorical tough love to U.S. automakers.

UC Berkeley economics professor Christina D. Romer, named Monday by President-elect Barack Obama to head his Council of Economic Advisors, is an expert on the Great Depression and monetary policy who is respected for her keen analytical skills, friends and colleagues say. Associates praised Romer, 49, as a knowledgeable and tough-minded expert who can be expected to work well with other members of Obama's team as his administration attempts to overcome the country's economic crisis.

Re "A week McCain may wish to forget," July 12 I suppose John McCain deserves some credit for his denunciation of Phil Gramm's idiotic commentary on the state of the economy. What is even more troubling, however, is McCain's poor judgment in his selection of Gramm as an economic advisor. Gramm is a millionaire who is totally out of touch with reality. During his tenures as a U.S. representative and a senator, he presided over some of the worst economic disasters in U.S. history, including the deregulation of savings and loans, which led to bailouts at taxpayers' expense; banking deregulation, which led to the current mortgage crisis; and let's not forget his influence to have his wife, Wendy Gramm, ascend to chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in which she was able to aid Enron's rise to power.

Anthony Solomon, an international economic advisor to three presidents who later played a leading part in setting federal monetary policy, died Jan. 18 of kidney failure at his home in New York. He was 88. Solomon held high-level positions in the State Department under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and later had a three-year stint as undersecretary of the treasury during the administration of Jimmy Carter.

President Bush on Wednesday promoted Harvey Rosen to be chairman of his Council of Economic Advisors, the group that counsels him on economic issues and prepares the administration's annual economic report to Congress. Rosen, a former economics professor at Princeton University, is a member of the council. He succeeds Gregory Mankiw, who resigned last week to return to his teaching post at Harvard University. Rosen is considered one of the country's leading experts on tax policy.

One of President Bush's top economic advisors, Stephen Friedman, plans to resign from the administration to return to private life, White House officials said Tuesday. Friedman was little seen during his two-year tenure as director of the National Economic Council, a formerly high-profile job that his predecessors used not only to advise the president on economic strategy but to promote the president's policies to the public.