President Barack Obama convened a “who’s who” of executives from the nation’s largest banks Friday to mend fences with Wall Street and drum up support for his plans to stabilize the financial system.

The meeting appeared to clear the air as bankers said afterward they knew their companies are vital to a potential economic recovery and they want to work with the government.

“The basic message is we’re all in this together,” John Stumpf, the Chief Executive Officer of Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), told reporters outside the White House after meeting with Obama. “We’re trying to do the right thing for America.”

The White House meeting was called in part to instill a sense of interdependence among attendees and to try to get beyond the furor over bailouts and bonuses that have roiled relations between the administration and the financial community.

“He wanted to convey to

How many economic-advice-giving organizations does it take to run a White House?

MarketWatch reports:

President-elect Barack Obama tapped former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to run a new White House advisory board tasked with offering independent advice about how to stage an economic recovery. Obama named the 81-year-old Volcker to head the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board....

The board is modeled on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that gave President Dwight Eisenhower independent opinions on intelligence issues. Austan Goolsbee, another key Obama adviser, will serve as the economic board's staff director and chief economist.

Volcker can be single-handedly credited with ending the great inflation of the 1970s, and has been critical of the unorthodox steps that Fed Chair Ben Bernanke has taken to address our current challenges. Although I share some of Volcker's concerns, it is not clear to me what specifically Volcker would propose to do instead.