Free Republic

It could have been bigger. Much, much bigger. Back in late 2008, soon-to-be Obama White House economic adviser Christina Romer prepared a policy memo—the contents a mystery until now—about how the new administration should deal with the collapsing economy. Romer thought to really do the job, the stimulus—later called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—should have been $1.8 trillion

A claim in Ron Suskind’s book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President, that the Obama Administration created a hostile workplace for his female advisors was met with denials from current White House Budget Director Jack Lew. “The contention that the President or any of his male appointees would denigrate these women in any way is mistaken. To the contrary, we all had a broad respect for these ladies,” Lew said as he struggled to suppress a titter over his use of the word “broad.” Former head of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer’s complaint,...

... Today, inflation is still low, but unemployment is stuck at a painfully high level. And, as in 1979, the methods the Fed has used so far aren’t solving the problem. ... It would work like this: The Fed would start from some normal year — like 2007 — and say that nominal G.D.P. should have grown at 4 1/2 percent annually since then, and should keep growing at that pace. Because of the recession and the unusually low inflation in 2009 and 2010, nominal G.D.P. today is about 10 percent below that path. Adopting nominal G.D.P. targeting commits the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Does anybody now doubt that this is on purpose? I mean, after all, Barack Obama inherits a AAA credit rating from George W. Bush, and look what he does to it. Obama is always running around complaining and whining and moaning about all that he inherited from George W. Bush. Well, he inherited a AAA credit rating, an unemployment rate of 5.7%. Does anybody doubt that this is on purpose? Well, look, my credit rating doesn't suck. There are a lot of individual Americans whose credit ratings aren't in trouble. The United States has never been in...

Christina Romer, the former chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers on Friday offered a rather strong opinion concerning the announcement by Standard & Poor's that the credit rating agency downgraded America's debt to AA+. Appearing on HBO's "Real Time," Romer said we're "pretty darn f--ked" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no commentary needed): ---- BILL MAHER, HOST: So, excuse my language, but we used to do a segment on this show called “How F—ked Are We?” (VIDEO CLIP) MAHER: I didn’t expect that there. This, just before we went on the air they said our rating got downgraded....

Frustrated by "the suffering of real families," President Obama's former top economic adviser recently called for action: "If I have a complaint about policy these days, it's that we're not doing enough," Christina Romer said in a speech last month at Vanderbilt University. "I think there are tools we have tools we have that we can use, and I think it's shameful that we're not using them." With unemployment still near 9% and the "real" unemployment rate at 15.7%, "we can't afford not to do more," Romer tells me in the accompanying video. "For heaven's sake with this many people...

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speak of the House John Boehner at the White House again last night. But, yet again there was no compromise about how to fund the federal government for the rest of the year. If you think this debate has gone on far too long, get ready for the battle over the 2012 budget! Chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan released his proposal earlier this week. Rep. Ryan's plan would cut $6.2 trillion dollars more over 10 years than Obama has proposed. "I certainly...

"I frankly don't understand why policy makers aren't more worried about the suffering of real families..." Calling the Obama Administration's flippant lack of concern for a comatose labor market they've done so much to create "shameful", former Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer -who left the Administration last fall- spoke Tuesday at Vanderbilt University:  “I think there are tools we have tools we have that we can use, and I think it’s shameful that we’re not using them”: __________________________________________________________________________ ...the sharpness of her criticism reflected deep concern among many Democratic economists about a political consensus that the federal government has to rein...

Dr. Christina Romer’s economic speech today, marking her last speech as an administration official, is an admission that the fiscal stimulus package that she helped craft has failed. Calling the economic recovery “insufficient”, she noted that a 0.6% drop in the unemployment rate still leaves unemployment unbearably high. “Real GDP is growing, but not fast enough to create the hundreds of thousands of jobs each month that we need to return employment to its pre-crisis levels,” she said. The Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus was meant to boost aggregate demand and get the economy going again. Estimates of GDP show that...

>Not enough of these signs have been seen around the country, feeding the public perception of failure of Obama's $862 billion stimulus spending, according to retiring chief economic adviser Christina Romer. Photo via CNS News. Yes, that is what is in Christina Romer's farewell speech to be given later today at the National Press Club as she steps down as head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.Reuters and USA Today report based on White House released excerpts previewing the speech:"Because the final bill was a mixture of hundreds of measures, many of which don't come with Recovery Act signs or...

Please--No More Stimulus Brian S. Wesbury and Robert Stein 08.10.10, 6:00 AM ET Christina Romer, the chairwoman of president Obama's Council of Economic Advisers has announced her resignation. While some people say her departure is a sign of deep divisions in the Obama team, we take her comments, about getting along with Larry Summers and enjoying every minute of her tenure, at face value. You, of course, can decide for yourself. Romer's infamous forecast that the $800 billion Obama stimulus bill would keep the unemployment rate at or below 8% will go down in history as one of the worst...

GOP rep: Obama's 'in deep doo-doo' By Bridget Johnson - 08/07/10 01:08 PM ET Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) said Friday that "a lot of people want to jump off" and follow Christina Romer out of the Obama administration. "When you see a ship starting to sink, a lot of people want to jump off," the congressman said on Fox Business Network. "And she is one." Romer, chairwoman of the president's council of economic advisers, announced Thursday that she was leaving Washington and returning to an economics teaching job at the University of California at Berkeley. "This president is in deep...

National Journal's Victor will have the scoop in tomorrow's edition of the National Journal magazine that Obama economic adviser Christina Romer is quitting the post. It all stems from her feeling -- despite her title as chairwoman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers -- that Larry Summers has more influence with the president.

Christina Romer, chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, says the reason unemployment remains so painfully high is clear: It’s not the inadequacy or laziness of the workers or the long-standing mismatch between workers’ skills and employers’ needs. It’s the old-fashioned Keynesian diagnosis: Too little demand in the economy. “The overwhelming weight of the evidence is that the current very high—and very disturbing—levels of overall and long-term unemployment are not a separate, structural problem, but largely a cyclical one. It reflects the fact that we are still feeling the effects of the collapse of demand caused by the crisis....

If that is not enough, she then says: "We said it would save or create some 3 and a half million jobs, it's absolutely is on track to do that"...This right here is offensive...This is Obama's Chair of Economic Advisers on Meet the Press (Video)

The major focus of President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight is expected to be on jobs. But as he pushes for more of the same solutions to get folks back to work maybe we should ask how well his policies have been working out after his first year in office. The White House recently announced that during the president’s first year between 1.5 to 2 million jobs were “saved or created” by the stimulus. When the December unemployment numbers were released, Christina Romer, President Obama's chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that while jobs were...

The Talk Shows Sunday, January 10th, 2010 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine; Republican National Chairman Michael Steele.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif.; Kaine; Steele.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.THIS WEEK (ABC): Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; former Gov. Doug Wilder, D-Va.; Romer.

A top White House economic adviser said Sunday "you'll get no argument from" her on the need to improve the miserable jobs picture. Council of Economic Advisers chief Christina Romer said it's devastating that some workers have been unemployed for two years and that job losses were continuing nearly a year after passage of the so-called stimulus bill. The jobless rate remained at 10 percent in December as 660,000 people said they had left the workforce. But Romer couched the news by saying the siphoning of jobs from the market has slowed. "In the first quarter of 2009, when we...

Did I just see a trail balloon launched? Over at a Wall Street Journal conference, Christina Romer, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers had this to say about deficit reduction: But the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers admitted that health reform and a growing economy isn’t enough to bring down the deficit. She did mention one other place that revenue could come from: letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Me: Since Obama already wants to get rid of the income and capital gains tax cuts for wealthier Americans that expire at the end of 2010,...

This team treats bad economic numbers the same way they treat bad election results,...tell the American people: what you're seeing is not what you're seeing...