Obama's Egghead Economic Saboteurs

Townhall.com ^ | June 8, 2011 | Michelle Malkin

[Kaslin]

Official motto of the White House economic team: Those who can, do. Those who can't, fantasize in the classroom, fail in Washington and then return to the Ivy Tower to train the next generation of egghead economic saboteurs. Life is good for left-wing academics. Everyone else pays dearly.

Take Austan Goolsbee, please. President Obama's "fresh-faced" University of Chicago econ professor arrived in Washington in December 2008 to fill two slots: chief economist/staff director of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and member of the Council of Economic Advisers. In September 2010, he replaced CEA head and fellow academic Christina Romer, who retreated to the University of California at Berkeley last August when unemployment hit 9.5 percent. (She infamously projected that the Obama stimulus would hold the jobless rate below 8 percent.)

Goolsbee's primary task: translating all of the administration's big-government theories for us dummies. As Goolsbee put it to his university's student newspaper: "We've certainly seen in previous crises that it's quite important to explain things to non-experts. The American people can confront any challenge if they're comfortable with the approach."

And what exactly was the nature of Goolsbee's vaunted expertise? Making money as a business rescue-and-recovery expert without ever having had to meet a payroll.

Goolsbee, the 15th wealthiest member of the Obama administration, has raked in assets valued at between $1,146,000 and $2,715,000. He also pulled in a University of Chicago salary of $465,000 and additional wages and honoraria worth $93,000, according to Washingtonian magazine. As I've noted before, the government research fellow and Obama campaign adviser was a champion of extending credit to the un-creditworthy. In a 2007 op-ed for The New York Times, he derided those who called subprime mortgages "irresponsible." He preferred to describe them as "innovations in the mortgage market" to expand the pool of homebuyers.

Goolsbee's most recent "innovation": the "White House White Board," a weekly video lecture teaching everyone else how to hitch what remains of America's free-market system to the wagon of the state and how much (or rather, how little) we should make doing it. He illustrated his grand interventionist strategy to pick and choose "Startup America" winners by drawing a trough of broken light bulbs (symbolizing entrepreneurial ideas) piling up in a "Valley of Death" because they lacked government support.

A comical choice of imagery given the Democrats' enviro-nutty ban on incandescent bulbs. But I digress.

When Goolsbee joined Team Obama, the unemployment rate was at around 6 percent. When he announced his resignation on Monday, the jobless rate stood at 9.1 percent. Romer and Jared Bernstein (former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden) had predicted unemployment would drop every single month after August 2009 due to the Obama stimulus. Bernstein bailed on the administration in April 2011 for the sanctuary of a liberal think-tank. He'll also now ply his failed wares as a financial pundit.

These hapless command-and-control ideologues were preceded by Peter Orszag, who hung his "Mission Accomplished" banner over the White House budget office in June 2010 after fewer than two years on the job, and by former National Economic Council head and hedge fund manager Larry Summers, who was caught sleeping on the job -- literally -- more than once during his brief tenure. Summers packed his bags in September. He was followed by Princeton economics professor and former top Obama Treasury Department official Alan Krueger in October 2010.

White House aides have lamented that the economic team is "exhausted." Apparently, Obama is tired of hearing from them, too. The Hill newspaper reports that he has stopped receiving daily economic briefings that were once treated with the same emergency status as national security briefings. So, the central planners continue to be paid to fail -- while their boss looks the other way at the destruction, whistling into what he calls America's temporary "head winds."

Nice non-work if you can get it.

[bvw]

University of Chicago salary of $465,000 and additional wages and honoraria worth $93,000

That's sick. The average debt burden taken on by students and parents to get a collage education in 2010 is $34,400.

A lot of recent graduates simply can not find decent jobs and are earning under $30K a year. Starting salaries for college graduates dropped 5% between 2002 and 2007 (inflation adjusted), and are likely to have fallen MUCH further since the economic distress of the last three years.

Today about 70% of college graduates graduate in debt. One in seven student loan holders have defaulted and are in collections. Many are in garnishment, and up to 25% of disposable income may be garnished -- although anecdotal reports are heard that claim higher garnishments. The law limits it to 25% but some collectors are aggressive, and the persons in default are shy and beaten.

There are nearly two million young folks who have borrowed for college. One in four is delinquent, but not yet in default.

An graduate in default, is in default because they have a poor paying job. Say $12 an hour -- that's typical. Take home is $10, take away 25% garnishment, and those debt trapped youths are taking home $300 a week. The indentured slave class that supports the nearly $600,000 yearly income of Obama's economic Professor Egghead.

That's disgusting and sick.

Sources:

• http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_18076249
• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124181970915002009.html

• http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-student-loan-20110423,0,3353776.story

[bvw]

Also I’m sourcing my own recollections of data and cases I saw when I worked for a major debt collection company.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

You want to fix the US economy via an “aggressive audit”??? You sound like an incumbent congressman — you are FAR too timid. We can only save the nation via a huge rollback of government and complete abolition of about 2/3 of the agencies of fedzilla.

[DH]

Goolsbee should be the poster boy of just what roams around in our universities.

A highly paid “professor” with absolutely NO real world experience and transferring his “no real world” knowledge to his students.

Hell! This guy would not know the difference between a P&L report and a balance sheet. Worse yet, he could not run a profitable lemonade stand.

What exactly is his pay based upon? I don’t think there is an answer...only “that’s the way it’s always been.”

[DH]

You are correct in your statements. However you should add item #4 to the statements.

Item #4 should be to review and immediately identify and end “OVERLAP.” ALL governmental offices strive to do the work and obtain the responsibility of some other governmental agency’s chartered functions so that they can “empire build” and grow larger.

Government overlap is tremendous and you might have 150 agencies doing at least some of the duties that duplicate the original chartered agency’s founding duties.

On top of that, the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) has grown to the point that it is almost impossible to actually pin down any SINGLE agency’s regulations that don’t conflict with some other agency that has encroached upon their founding charter.

What all of this amounts to is a massive expenditure of taxpayer money to pay for governmental functions that only need ONE agency to run...not hundreds of them.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

These hapless command-and-control ideologues were preceded by Peter Orszag, who hung his "Mission Accomplished" banner over the White House budget office in June 2010 after fewer than two years on the job, and by former National Economic Council head and hedge fund manager Larry Summers, who was caught sleeping on the job -- literally -- more than once during his brief tenure. Summers packed his bags in September. He was followed by Princeton economics professor and former top Obama Treasury Department official Alan Krueger in October 2010.

White House aides have lamented that the economic team is "exhausted." Apparently, Obama is tired of hearing from them, too. The Hill newspaper reports that he has stopped receiving daily economic briefings that were once treated with the same emergency status as national security briefings. So, the central planners continue to be paid to fail -- while their boss looks the other way at the destruction, whistling into what he calls America's temporary "head winds."

Nice non-work if you can get it.

those that can....do......those who can't.... teach

[Daaave]

I was only going to post a flattering picture of Miss Malkin. I was going to say how much I liked her and the article. I wanted to thank you for posting another fine article by someone I enjoy reading.

But I saw that second picture and the name of the website. I thought if I have to get this angry, this early, everybody else should too.

[RayChuang88]

Actually, bureaucratic overlap is part of the things that my suggested aggressive audit roots out. Why do I suggest we have only ONE agency--my proposed Department of Social Services--handle Social Security, Medicare and other social services? Lot cheaper and a lot less hassle with one bureaucracy for social services, not dealing with multiple ones like we have now.