FOLLOW THE MONEY

Lawrence Summers, mentioned as a possible Treasury Secretary, is a managing director at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group.

Robert Rubin, mentioned as a possible Treasury Secretary, has been temporary chair of Citgroup (and a current director) and co chair of Goldman Sachs. He also was a founder of the conlib economic group, the Hamilton Project.

Top Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett was a member of the board of the Chicago Stock Exachange from 2000 to 2007 and was chair from 2004-2007

Top Obama advisor John Podesta has a lobbying firm that has represented BP, Lockheed Martin, National Association of Broadcasters, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Sunoco and Wal-Mart

Bill Daley, advisor to the transition team, is mid west chairman of JP Morgan Chase.

Rahm Emanuel, whom Obama selected to be chief of staff, earned, according to Fortune magazine, $18 million between 1999 and 20002 working as a managing director for the investment banks Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein

Tim Geithner, a possible Treasury Secretary, is head of the NY Federal Reserve. His first boss was Henry Kissinger and he has close ties to the Wall Street players.

John Corzine, now governor of New Jewrsey and possible Treasury Secretary and CEO of Goldman Sachs before Hank Paulsen staged a coup and got rid of him

Richard Holbrooke, mentioned for Secretary of State, is vice president of Perseus, a major private equity firm. He was a member of the board of AIG until July when he resigned. He has also been vice chair of Credit Suisse First Boston, and managing director of Lehman Brothers.

Other names dropped:

John W Rogers Jr runs a mutual fund company in Chicago where Obama spent much of the day after the election.

Otto Kramer is a financier at Boston Provident.

Robert Wolfe is an investment banker and CEO of UBS Americas

Mark Gallogly is a private equity expert who funded the firm Centerbridge after working at Blackstone.

Jim Torrey is a fund manager.

Brian Mathis works for the Provident Group

Frank Brosens runs Taconic Capital Advisors

Josh Gotbaum formerly with Lazard Freres

WHAT SORT OF ECONOMISTS DO WE GET?

Greg Mankiw's Blog - I was struck yesterday by an excerpt from an interview with economist James Galbraith:

But there are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you're saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis?

Ten or 12 would be closer than two or three.

What does that say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?

It's an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.

Like his late father, Galbraith the younger is highly critical of mainstream economics. This is noteworthy in part because Galbraith is listed as an Obama economic adviser. One of the more telling things to look out for in the coming weeks (assuming the seemingly inevitable Obama victory) will be which economists get which jobs in the new adminstration. Will the important positions be filled with people like Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman, who are essentially mainstream economists with slightly left of center political views, or with heterodox economists like Galbraith who are deeply skeptical of the economics found in most textbooks? If the administration is filled with prominent members of both groups, the internal battles over the heart and soul of the new administration's economic policy should prove fascinating to watch.