President-elect Barack Obama announced today the formation of an Economic Recovery Advisory Board that will provide regular briefings to the president. The newly-formed board, modeled after the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is designed to give Obama independent, nonpartisan views on the administration's economic plans.

Leading the board will be former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, who will serve as chairman, as well as Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who Obama said has helped shape his economic views over the last four years.

"The Board will be composed of distinguished individuals from diverse backgrounds outside of government -- from business, labor, academia and other areas -- who will bring to bear their wisdom and expertise on the formulation, implementation and evaluation of my Administration's economic recovery plan," Obama said at a morning press conference in Chicago. "The reality is that sometimes policymaking in Washington can become too insular. The walls of the echo chamber can sometimes keep out fresh voices and new ways of thinking -- and those who serve in Washington don't always have a ground-level sense of which programs and policies are working for people, and which aren't."

This was Obama's third press conference on the economy and his economic team in the last three days.