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NOMINATIONS

Three Senior Nominees Announced for Treasury

President Obama announced three senior Treasury Department nominees Saturday.

Helen E. Garrett, an economist and lawyer who is vice president of academic planning and budget at the University of Southern California, is Obama's choice for assistant secretary for tax policy. Garrett, who was a member of President George W. Bush's 2005 bipartisan tax reform advisory panel, is a former professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

Obama has tapped Michael S. Barr, an adviser to Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, as assistant secretary for financial institutions. He is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution.

George W. Madison is Obama's pick for general counsel at Treasury. Madison is a former executive vice president and general counsel at TIAA-CREF. He was a partner at Mayer, Brown & Platt in New York, where he practiced banking and finance law.

-- By Philip Rucker

FORUM ON ENERGY, CLIMATE

Major Economies Invited For Dialogue in Late April

Establishing a dialogue between developed and developing countries, President Obama launched a Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate on Saturday, with the group's first meeting set for Washington on April 27-28, followed by a summit in Italy in July.

Obama invited the leaders of 16 major economies, as well as the secretary general of the United Nations, to participate. The White House said the forum is designed to "help generate the political leadership necessary to achieve a successful outcome" at the U.N. climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

The initiative represents a modified version of the Major Economies Meeting started by President George W. Bush. Several foreign officials accused the United States of seeking to undermine the U.N. process with those talks.