President Obama announced today that Dr. Alan B. Krueger will serve as the new Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

If Krueger’s name sounds familiar, it should. Krueger used to work for the Treasury Department, but felt the pull of a higher calling:

Wilson School professor Alan Krueger will step down from his post as assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy next month and return to the University. Krueger, who was nominated to the post in March 2009, is the latest of several economic officials in President Barack Obama’s administration to announce their resignations.
“It was a great opportunity for me to take a leave from Princeton and work at the Treasury Department at a critical time in our nation’s history,” Krueger told The Daily Princetonian. “The University, I think, really does stay true to its motto of ‘In the Nation’s Service’ by encouraging faculty to take public service leave.”
Krueger could risk losing tenure if he extends his two-year leave of absence from the University.
While he was originally planning to return to the University in time to begin teaching this fall, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner convinced him to stay at his post for a few more months, his colleague, economics professor Alan Blinder ’67 told the ‘Prince.’ Krueger will return after fall break and teach a course on the state of the current economy in the spring.

Well I do hope Dr. Krueger and Princeton have the whole tenure issue figure out. I wouldn’t want that to distract him from his job of fixing the U.S. economy.