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Obama calling on economic experts for their advice

CHICAGO – President-elect Obama is calling on economic experts to discuss the first steps toward healing a damaged economy as he forms a new administration in the face of a worsening crisis.

"We're not starting from nowhere," said Lawrence Summers, a Treasury secretary under President Clinton and one of the 17 members of Obama's transition economic advisory board who were to meet Friday with Obama.

"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," Summers told NBC's "Today."

Leaders of business, government and academia to meet with Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden include executives from Xerox Corp., Time Warner Inc., Google Inc. and the Hyatt hotel company. Investor Warren Buffett was participating by telephone.

Obama also was holding his first news conference as president-elect after the meeting.

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