NEW ECONOMIC ADVISER FOR THE PRESIDENT

President Bush on Wednesday promoted his No. 2 economic adviser to the top job after yet another White House aide announced he was quitting before the administration's final year in power.

Departing is Al Hubbard, director of the National Economic Council, which advises the president on U.S. and global economic matters and helps coordinate policy. His successor is his deputy, Keith Hennessey.

Hennessey came to the White House in 2002 and has been deputy to two previous directors of the council. He also was a top budget aide to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and worked for the Senate Budget Committee.

"Keith has been an important member of my White House team for more than five years," Bush said in a statement.

Hubbard's departure comes as Bush faces one of the biggest economic challenges of his presidency, a severe slump in housing and a credit crisis that have roiled financial markets and triggered fears of a recession.

Hubbard said in a letter to Bush that he would leave by year's end. "Were it not for my strong desire to spend more time with my kids, I would not have considered departing," said Hubbard, the father of three. Hubbard wrote that the Bush White House was a place of "forthrightness" and "mutual respect" in Washington, which is "often portrayed as an arena of deception and self-promotion."

Hubbard has helped direct White House policy on entitlements, energy security, climate change, housing and trade investment. He has been deeply involved in the debate over a children's health insurance program and Bush's proposal to treat health insurance costs as taxable income for the first time.

"Al contributed his own ideas and also worked to ensure that all views were brought to the table and given fair analysis and debate," Bush said. "While many of the policies Al worked to develop are in place today, other policy initiatives, including Social Security reform and health care reform, have laid the foundation for policies I believe will be adopted in the future."

The list of other aides, confidants and Cabinet members who have left or soon will includes Fran Townsend, Bush's terrorism adviser; political adviser Karl Rove; press secretary Tony Snow; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and senior adviser Dan Bartlett.

Hubbard was a low-profile adviser whose strength came from his closeness to Bush. The two attended Harvard University together, where they each received a master's degree in business.

The National Economic Council was created in the Clinton administration to coordinate economic policy. The first director was Robert Rubin, who went on to become Bill Clinton's treasury secretary.

Hennessey has spent five years as the council's deputy director. But he has avoided attention to such an extent that some White House reporters had to ask who he was when his appointment was announced. He is described by colleagues as a policy wonk.

Hennessey was Lott's policy director before taking the NEC job in 2002. He earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford and a masters degree in public policy from Harvard.

Bush's first council director, Larry Lindsey, a former Federal Reserve board member, left in late 2002 after drawing the administration's ire for making forecasts about how much a war with Iraq could cost. He was replaced by Stephen Friedman, who had been co-chairman of Wall Street investment giant Goldman Sachs in the early 1990s with Rubin.

Hubbard succeeded Friedman at the beginning of Bush's second term, when the administration had high hopes for achieving success on a number of such major issues as addressing Social Security's problems and overhauling tax laws. But as Bush became mired in problems involving the war, his domestic initiatives failed to make headway in Congress.

Hubbard, who had been president of E&A Industries, an Indianapolis investment firm, has not announced what he will do next.