CHICAGO (AP):

President-elect Barack Obama yesterday named three veteran regulators to round out his economic team and vowed to revamp regulatory rules to prevent a repeat of the financial and economic debacles the country is going through.

His announcement came as he lays the groundwork for a giant economic stimulus package, possibly US$850 billion over two years, aimed at reviving the flagging economy. It would rival drastic government actions taken to fight the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Obama blamed regulators for the financial debacle, saying they "dropped the ball". Regulators, he said, "have been asleep at the switch".

American people, watching their investments tank, are frustrated that "there's not a lot of adult supervision out there", Obama added.

At a Chicago news conference, Obama named Mary Schapiro to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Daniel Tarullo to fill an empty Federal Reserve seat. All three will need to be confirmed by the Senate next year.

In announcing the appointments, Obama mentioned disgraced Wall Street money manager, Bernard Madoff, saying that the latest investment scandal "has reminded us yet again of how badly reform is needed." The president-elect said his new team would help put in place new rules that would help "crack down on the culture of greed and scheming".

If confirmed by the Senate, Schapiro, who served as an SEC commissioner in Republican and Democratic administrations and is currently the head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, would take over an agency that faces growing criticism for its failure to protect investors and detect trouble brewing on Wall Street.

Most difficult times

The SEC stands at what could be one of the most difficult times in its history, buffeted by criticism for failing to detect signs that major Wall Street banks were in trouble before the financial crisis erupted and for lax oversight and enforcement in other areas.

As the scandal involving Madoff continues to stun the financial world, revelations have surfaced that staff at the SEC repeatedly failed over the course of a decade to fully investigate credible allegations against him. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox on Tuesday ordered the agency's inspector general to investigate what went wrong.

Gensler, a former Treasury official in the Clinton administration, would lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is an independent agency created by Congress to regulate trading in the commodity futures and option markets.