Obama to Tap Austan Goolsbee to Chair Council of Economic Advisers

President Obama will name Austan Goolsbee to chair the Council of Economic Advisers at his Friday press conference, an administration source told Politics Daily.

Goolsbee, 41, known as a telegenic and witty face of the Obama economics team, is being elevated from staff director and chief economist on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Council of Economic Advisers.

An economics professor at the University of Chicago when he met Obama, Goolsbee has been an Obama economics adviser since his 2004 campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. He has an undergraduate and master's degree from Yale and a doctorate from MIT.

Goolsbee is replacing Christina Romer, who departed on Sept. 3 to return to the University of California in Berkeley, where she was an economics professor and where her son is starting high school this fall. Obama now must fill an opening on the council, which is subject to Senate confirmation. Goolsbee's promotion is not.

Affable and often booked by the Obama White House to appear on shows, Goolsbee was once described as "Elliott Ness meets Milton Friedman" by comic Jon Stewart.