FACTBOX: Obama likely to name economic team soon

(Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is expected to move quickly to announce his selections for top economic posts, including Treasury secretary.

While Republican President George W. Bush serves until January 20, analysts say the newly elected Democrat will want to have an economic team assembled and ready to hit the ground running when he takes office.

The officials will be in the forefront of efforts to battle the financial crisis and strengthen an economy that many worry could be headed for a deep recession.

Obama will meet with his economic advisers on Friday and hold his first news conference since becoming president-elect.

Here are the main contenders for the senior economic jobs:

TREASURY SECRETARY

* Lawrence Summers. He was Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and is the former president of Harvard University. Summers' tenure at Harvard was marked by conflict with faculty and other controversies but Wall Street held him in high regard during his time at Treasury.

Summers has been a top adviser to Obama, especially after the financial crisis intensified in mid-September. He gained seasoning as a financial firefighter during the 1990s when he grappled with the Mexican peso crisis, the Asian financial flu and the Russian financial crisis.

* Timothy Geithner. The president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank has argued that banks crucial to the global financial system should operate under a unified regulatory framework. He worked with former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers as treasury undersecretary for international affairs during the Clinton administration.

* Paul Volcker. The former Federal Reserve chairman has long been seen as a formidable figure in the financial world after he broke the back of double-digit inflation that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s. He endorsed Obama in January and was a key adviser in helping him craft a March speech in which the Democratic candidate called for an overhaul of U.S. financial regulations.

Obama consulted him frequently during the campaign.

* Laura Tyson. The former chairwoman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers who also served as his National Economic Council director. She is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and was tapped as a key adviser to Obama after he secured the Democratic nomination for president in June.

* Jon Corzine. The governor of New Jersey and former U.S. senator is a one-time supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom Obama defeated for the Democratic party nomination. The former chairman of investment bank Goldman Sachs appeared in Chicago at an economic summit with Obama, and has helped articulate the candidate's program to curb speculation in energy markets. While some speculate he could be tapped, he told an interviewer on Wednesday that he has had no discussions about the job.

* Sheila Bair. The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp is a moderate Republican who is considered a longshot for the Treasury post. She has won praise from congressional Democrats for forcefully advocating greater efforts to help U.S. homeowners stuck with unaffordable mortgages.

DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

* Peter Orszag. Has been director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office since January 2007 and previously served as an economic adviser to President Clinton. A specialist on tax and budget policy, Orszag has also focused on Social Security reform, one of several difficult issues that will face the new president. Before heading CBO, Orszag was a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution.