FACTBOX: Obama comments on economic issues

(Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday announced a new panel to advise him on stabilizing financial markets as his latest effort to tackle problems ailing the U.S. economy.

In his third news conference this week, Obama also addressed several economic issues that will confront his administration when he takes office on January 20. Here are some details of the issues he has discussed this week:

NAMES ECONOMIC OFFICIALS

* Obama named former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head his new President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which will generate ideas on how to handle the current economic crisis. Longtime Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee was named staff director for the panel.

* Obama named Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag to head the White House Office of Management and Budget. He named Rob Nabors, who worked for the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, as the deputy director of the OMB.

* On Monday Obama named New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner to be the next Treasury secretary.

* He named former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to head the White House National Economic Council. Obama called Summers "one of the great economic minds of our time."

* Christina Romer, a macroeconomist and economic historian at the University of California, Berkeley, who studied the U.S. recovery from the Great Depression, was named as chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.

CREDIT FLOWS

* Obama said he supported the most recent efforts by the Treasury to keep credit flowing and said it was important for federal agencies to act "in a forceful fashion" to get credit to markets.

BUDGET REFORM

* Obama said budget reform is vital. "In these challenging times, when we are facing both rising deficits and a sinking economy, budget reform is not an option. It is an imperative."

* Obama said budget priorities would include healthcare modernization, schools and "a down payment on a new energy economy."

NEED FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN, STIMULUS

* Obama said as soon as economic recovery is well under way the government must set up a long-term plan to reduce the structural deficit to ensure it is not leaving "a mountain of debt" for the next generation.

* On Monday he said he would not discuss how big a stimulus package might be needed, saying only that it had to be "significant enough that it really gives a jolt to the economy" and adding that "it's going to be costly."