Posted on 06/08/2011 2:58:16 AM PDT by 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.
Good post.
You know, I’m not losing sleep anymore over the coming election. I was fine with everyone in the field bringing in their own group.
Yeah, the guy Rollins for Bachmann has ticked me off, and I’ve lost some respect for her...
BUT HERE’S the deal. If this country re elects this egg head president to a second term.....WE are in real trouble. That means that reasonable, intelligent, working people in this country are totally ignorant.
I’m not losing sleep. I think anyone can beat this guy, and will. It’s up to us for form a long standing coalition of conservative thinkers...economists...doers.
Good article. He did bring in sabatours with every new day.
Bump.
EXCELLENT writing.
Because Rollins became her campaign manager, or because the way he put Sarah Palin down? Notice that #1 Michelle Bachman has said that she liked Sarah Palin and 2 Rollin was also Mike Huckabee's campaign manager and what good did that do him
SpongeBob Squarepants could beat Obama at this point. His policies may not be as destructive either, given that SpongeBob has no policies.
Even Mutt Freakin’ Romboy could beat the golfer. Even without my vote.
But I’m holding out hope that someone with better Conservative values and credentials can pull out in front.
Yeah, these guys are smart.
Yeah, they are ALSO destroying the economy, part by part in a systematic manner.
It is very hard (read: IMPOSSIBLE) for me to believe that DESTRUCTION is NOT THEIR INTENT.
1. Aggressively audit every Federal, state and local government agency and used the audit results to start cutting down the size of government--agency size and regulations--by 30% initially and over 50% in around four years. For example, we need to merge Social Security, Medicare and other social services into a singular Department and potentially save over US$300 billion per year off the Federal budget.
2. Massively overhaul our income tax system to reduce compliance cost and to encourage American residents and businesses to keep their savings and capital investments in the USA. The flat income tax plan proposed by Steve Forbes in a book he wrote in 2005 should be at minimum what tax reform should be, in my humble opinion.
3. Aggressively oversee the financial markets by requiring real liquidity backing for hedge funds, derivatives, and other "new"-style investments (or ban them outright as financially too risky), increasing the minimum margin requirements (MMR) for futures trading to 20% (and require the buyer take 40% physical delivery of goods bought on the futures market), and re-imposing the Glass-Steagall Act to "firewall" bank assets from the ups and downs of the stock market. Too much of the wealth generated nowadays is through the financial markets at the expense of almost everything else in the US economy, in my humble opinion.
Somehow, the "egghead" economists who work for the Obama Administration don't understand just these three fixes would go a LONG way towards real economic recovery. By freeing up more financial resources normally taken by government, encouraging the keeping of savings and capital investments in the USA, and stopping the financial excesses of Wall Street, it does the best thing of all: bringing back the manufacturing base, which would quickly cut the unemployment rate, and with companies now back operating in the USA, it also means potentially much higher tax revenue to the government, which could mean finally we can tackle the issues of government debt and how to save Social Security and Medicare.
I don’t like the guy’s tactics. He’s producing fodder for the democrats. Right out of the gate the bas*ard attacks Palin and does so personally and without basis.
There is a huge.... huge difference between being a politician.... ie senator, rep and a governor....They govern. They make decisions that have consequences. That’s why politicians seldom make good presidents.
I don’t really know what Bachmann brings to the table. I think she is smarter than Palin, at least when she opens her mouth....but Palin is a doer....
She would be good for this country...
Bottom line, the government has intentionally created an underclass totally dependent on them for their existence. So I do lose sleep, knowing what another four years of this disaster will bring to our country.
Keynesian economics exists to give a pseudo-intellectual basis to socialism, to give supporters of socialism a seemingly rational basis on which to believe that socialism can work.
Unfortunately, it can’t work. Replacing one Keynesian with another on the White House economics team might bring a different approach to trying to get Keynesian economics to work, but since the foundation is still quicksand, it won’t work.
It is no big deal that Obama has quit attending daily economics briefings—they haven’t been doing any good. (It almost makes me wonder if Obama is beginning the long intellectual journey towards accepting conservative thought, as he apparently has begun to realize that the economic aspect of socialism can’t work.)
| The anomaly of the current recession is the anomaly of Zer0's political philosophy and worldview. Obama never intended to 'deliver.' Obama intended to redistribute wealth and punish successful people. Winning rule in 2012: Direct political attack on Obama! Hopefully Zer0's massive incompetence will move more non-blacks to vote against him in 2012. We'll see. |
They’re doing O.K. considering their assignment is to destroy the middle class in this country.
“Yeah, the guy Rollins for Bachmann has ticked me off, and I’ve lost some respect for her...”
I don’t believe there’s any friction between Bachmann and Palin. I see the Leftists and RINOs trying to promote friction there. Divide and conquer.
I’m no economics prof at the U of Chicago or Cal Berkeley, but my advice would be cut taxes across the board (income and capital gains and corporate), de-regulate with respect to commercial and enviromental requirements, and stand back and watch the economy zoom.
MB hearts Myth.
Agree 100% with your suggestions, but.....
Imam Ozero is NOT interested in fixing the US economy.
Imam Ozero WANTS the US economy to fail and force more Americans to depend on Fed government.
Imam Ozero wants to overthrow America’s free market, Contitution based system and replace with his marxist beliefs.
The leftist lunatic 0bama supporters hate any conservative
“...but my advice would bge cut taxes across the board (income and capital gains and corporate), de-regulate with respect to commercial and environmental requirements, and stand back and watch the economy zoom...”
Sounds like you want miracles from psychotic, adolescent
Progressives.
They’ll never vote for low taxes and mimimal regulation and will always vote for high taxes, regulation and the power to manipulate public monies into their personal coffers by whatever specious means necessary.
IMHO
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