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New York Times' Frank Rich Named Obama's Top Economic Adviser (Rich Indeed)
The American Spectator ^ | 10.26.10 | Andrew B. Wilson

Posted on 10/27/2010 10:51:05 PM PDT by This Just In

New York Times' Frank Rich Named Obama's Top Economic Adviser

By Andrew B. Wilson on 10.26.10 @ 6:08AM

Things are not going well for President Obama in his search for an economic adviser to replace the departing Larry Summers. The President had hoped to reach across the aisle -- no, make that the ditch -- to find a top businessperson to take the job.

You know the ditch. It is the muddy resting place for that badly damaged car, a.k.a. the U.S. economy, which the president is trying to rescue. He says that the same people who drove the car into the ditch (i.e. Republicans and business people) have refused to help, playing the part of idle on-lookers -- "sipping their slurpees." Now he is surprised to find that none of the CEOs whom he so freely insults wants to join him in his fetid, fly-infested ditch. Left to his own devices, with no one but his fellow Democrats to help, the president continues to gun the fiscal accelerator, causing the wheels to spin and the car to sink ever more deeply and hopelessly into the mire. As Albert Einstein supposedly said, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: frankrich; larrysummers
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FROM THE ARTICLE:

"Rich knows all about them from a recent viewing of the movie Inside Job, narrated by the economic savant and well-known movie star Matt Damon:"

Economic savant? Hilarious. Now that was hitting below the belt. I like it.

1 posted on 10/27/2010 10:51:07 PM PDT by This Just In
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To: This Just In

This is the AZConservative, right?


2 posted on 10/27/2010 10:51:38 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie (Stimulus. 0bamaCare. Cap and Tax. 9/11 Victory Mosque. TARP. Amnesty. Summer of Recovery.)
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To: Uncle Miltie

He is a flaming leftwing columnist for the NYT.


3 posted on 10/27/2010 10:56:11 PM PDT by This Just In
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To: This Just In

WEll, he has a big job. Professor Kotlikoff defines in a few statistics the true size of the US national debt Mr. Rich is going to have to manage for the poor United States:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/the-scary-actual-us-government-debt/article1773879/print/

Why can’t we know what the IMF knows?

The scary actual U.S. government debt
NEIL REYNOLDS

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is banrupt.”

Writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Kotlikoff says the IMF itself has quietly confirmed that the U.S. is in terrible fiscal trouble – far worse than the Washington-based lender of last resort has previously acknowledged. “The U.S. fiscal gap is huge,” the IMF asserted in a June report. “Closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 per cent of U.S. GDP.”

This sum is equal to all current U.S. federal taxes combined. The consequences of the IMF’s fiscal fix, a doubling of federal taxes in perpetuity, would be appalling – and possibly worse than appalling.

Prof. Kotlikoff says: “The IMF is saying that, to close this fiscal gap [by taxation], would require an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal income taxes, our corporate taxes and all other federal taxes.

“America’s fiscal gap is enormous – so massive that closing it appears impossible without immediate and radical reforms to its health care, tax and Social Security systems – as well as military and other discretionary spending cuts.”

He cites earlier calculations by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that concluded that the United States would need to increase tax revenue by 12 percentage points of GDP to bring revenue into line with spending commitments. But the CBO calculations assumed that the growth of government programs (including Medicare) would be cut by one-third in the short term and by two-thirds in the long term. This assumption, Prof. Kotlikoff notes, is politically implausible – if not politically impossible.

One way or another, the fiscal gap must be closed. If not, the country’s spending will forever exceed its revenue growth, and no one’s real debt can increase faster than his real income forever.

Prof. Kotlikoff uses “fiscal gap,” not the accumulation of deficits, to define public debt. The fiscal gap is the difference between a government’s projected revenue (expressed in today’s dollar value) and its projected spending (also expressed in today’s dollar value). By this measure, the United States is in worse shape than Greece.

Prof. Kotlikoff is a noted economist. He is a research associate at the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a former senior economist with then-president Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has served as a consultant with governments around the world. He is the author (or co-author) of 14 books: Jimmy Stewart Is Dead (2010), his most recent book, explains his recommendations for reform.


4 posted on 10/27/2010 10:57:13 PM PDT by givemELL (Does Taiwan eet the Criteria to Qualify as an "Overseas Territory of the United States"? by Richar)
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To: This Just In

He used to be a very good drama critic. I don’t know why he decided to become a political pundit.


5 posted on 10/27/2010 10:58:05 PM PDT by Borges
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To: This Just In

Please tell me this is a joke!


6 posted on 10/27/2010 11:01:16 PM PDT by KoRn (Department of Homeland Security, Certified - "Right Wing Extremist")
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To: Borges

More drama in politics?


7 posted on 10/27/2010 11:01:27 PM PDT by Blogger
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To: givemELL

Mr. Wilson is being sarcastic, and mocking the administration.

The writer makes a perfect point in the article.


8 posted on 10/27/2010 11:01:47 PM PDT by This Just In
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To: This Just In

This is almost beyond the pale.


9 posted on 10/27/2010 11:03:28 PM PDT by malkee (Actually I'm an ex-smoker--more than four years now-- But I think about it every day.)
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To: Borges

“He used to be a very good drama critic. I don’t know why he decided to become a political pundit.”

Is there a difference?

I believe the title is ‘Drama Queen’.


10 posted on 10/27/2010 11:04:12 PM PDT by This Just In
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To: KoRn

Read the article and you’ll appreciate the title of it.


11 posted on 10/27/2010 11:05:03 PM PDT by This Just In
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To: This Just In

Well, “nominated” nominally means “named”. I guess that’s the joke ... had me going.


12 posted on 10/27/2010 11:09:23 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: This Just In

He was quite dispassionate and cerebral. I learned a lot about NY theater from his columns.


13 posted on 10/27/2010 11:09:42 PM PDT by Borges
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To: malkee
This is almost beyond the pale.

Then again, the _resident's "shovel ready" rhetoric long ago went beyond the pail.

≤}B^)

14 posted on 10/27/2010 11:11:45 PM PDT by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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To: Borges

I don’t believe I’ve ever read one of his critiques, but if it’s anything like his columns, it’s far from cerebral and dispassionate, to say the least.

FROM THE ARTICLE:

“This is how Rich begins his latest column in the Times:

President Obama, the Rodney Dangerfield of 2010, gets no respect for averting another Great Depression, for saving 3.3 million jobs with stimulus spending, or for salvaging GM and Chrysler from the junkyard. And none of these good deeds, no matter how substantial, will go unpunished if the projected Democratic bloodbath materializes on Election Day. Some are even going unremembered. For Obama, the ultimate indignity is the Times/CBS News poll in September showing that only 8 percent of Americans know that he gave 95 percent of taxpayers a tax cut.”


15 posted on 10/27/2010 11:15:15 PM PDT by This Just In
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To: This Just In

So, things are going to get even worse I take it!?!


16 posted on 10/27/2010 11:15:31 PM PDT by TigersEye (Who crashed the markets on 9/28/08 and why?)
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To: TigersEye

If Rich is named as Obama’s economic adviser? Yes. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t matter who’s named as his economic adviser. Unless we can take control of the House and Senate, the radical agenda will continue to drive us into the abyss.


17 posted on 10/27/2010 11:22:39 PM PDT by This Just In
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To: TigersEye
Zer0 can make him his drama Czar!

The Rats are shovel-ready for the dust bin of history.

epic_fail

18 posted on 10/27/2010 11:23:19 PM PDT by BobP (The piss-stream media - Never to be watched again in my house)
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To: BobP

You are the Graphics Master.


19 posted on 10/27/2010 11:27:07 PM PDT by This Just In
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To: This Just In; pandoraou812
… and then turn around and send a small portion of the proceeds back in what Mr. Obama and the Democrats are pleased to call "tax rebates." And most of those "tax rebates" have gone to people who pay no income tax anyway.

That sounds familiar. My aging mother received a "one time only Medicare rebate" of $250 dollars today to "help with the cost of your medicine during the gap." Gee, that's nice, that will buy about four months of one of her meds.

The other piece of mail she got today was a $456 dollar per year increase in her Medicare supplement insurance. It says the increase is "due to increased health care costs."

In spite of being in the first stages of Alzheimer's she instantly recognized that a) the $250 for help with drug costs "during the gap" was a blatant bribe from "0bama's stash." And b) the Medicare supplemental insurance is going up because of 0bamacare not "increased health care costs."

She may be losing her memory but she's not stupid, you jug-eared lying communist POS.

20 posted on 10/27/2010 11:29:14 PM PDT by TigersEye (Who crashed the markets on 9/28/08 and why?)
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