President-elect Obama met with economic experts Friday to discuss ways to stabilize the teetering U.S. economy that is expected to dominate his transition to power and early days in office.

Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden convened a meeting of the transition economic advisory board, a high-powered collection of business, academic and government leaders. They included Lawrence Summers, who some have mentioned as a candidate for Treasury secretary, a post he held in the Clinton administration; Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, whose state has been hit hard by losses in the auto industry; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Rahm Emanuel, who will be Obama's White House chief of staff, also participated in the meeting.

"We're not starting from nowhere," Summers told NBC's "Today" show. "Throughout his campaign the president-elect has been talking about what we need to do. We need to put the middle class at the center of the policy approach in a way that it hasn't been these last years."

Other participants in the meeting included executives from Xerox Corp., Time Warner Inc.; and the Hyatt hotel company. Investor Warren Buffett was calling in by telephone.

Obama also was holding his first news conference as president-elect after the meeting.

It was to be Obama's first public appearance since Tuesday's election, where exit polls showed that the economy was far and away the top issue for voters. More evidence of a recession came Friday when...