Free Republic

A recent comment by Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee gives you a glimpse into how Fed people think and helps to explain exactly why you’re paying more for everything. It’s almost as if inflating was hardwired into Fed members’ brains. Goolsbee recently sat down with Illinois Treasurer Mike Frerichs during the National Association of State Treasurers conference in Chicago. In the course of the conversation, the subject of pennies came up. There are a lot of people who think the U.S. Treasury should do away with the penny. This would make sense financially. It costs about 3 cents...

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle called upon the president of Chicago’s Federal Reserve to tell viewers that they are economically far better off than they think. "We need an economic explainer," the MSNBC host said. "People are confused, they’re exhausted, but they’re also doing quite well." Ruhle, who hosts MSNBC’s "The Eleventh Hour," had been discussing a recent Federal Reserve report that "shows people are still struggling to cover day-to-day expenses, even as inflation has slowed." She noted how some major brands are responding by enticing consumers with slashed prices, "Target says it is cutting prices on 5,000 essential items, things...

Scandal: A court tells the White House to ac knowledge the existence of a probe into whether one of its advisers used private tax records for political gain. Transparency is being forced on an administration that's anything but. In 2010, an attorney for industrialists and libertarian political donors Charles and David Koch told the Weekly Standard of a senior Obama aide telling reporters on background that the Kochs "do not pay corporate income tax" through their company, Koch Industries. How, the attorney justifiably wondered, did the White House get his clients' private information from the IRS? The anonymous official has...

The Obama administration must acknowledge the existence of an independent investigation into former White House senior economics adviser Austan Goolsbee’s alleged unauthorized access to the Koch brother’s tax returns, a court ruled Tuesday. A federal judge ruled the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) must disclose to watchdog group Cause of Action whether records of an investigation exist. Cause of Action filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit after TIGTA refused to confirm or deny the existence of the investigation in what is commonly known as a “Glomar response.” “The court has ruled that the federal government cannot...

One of the most important and so-far least noted threads in the IRS sandal cloth is the inexplicable remark made by Austan Goolsbee, at the time the Chairman of the White Council of Economic Advisors about the taxes paid by the Koch brothers - arch villains in the Manichean delusions of the American left - that would require his knowledge of their confidential tax returns. Did the White House senior staff illegally browse through the tax records of their political enemies? The Washington Free Beacon has been trying to find out, and uncovered an interesting response: CJ Ciaramella reports: The...

RUSH: The news media today, gosh, the unemployment rate's up to 9%, and they're celebrating. They're talking about some of the strongest job growth, with 244,000 new jobs, 62,000 of them from Mickey D's, 62,000 from McDonald's. Now, remember in the past, those jobs have been impugned by the Democrats and the left as meaningless, futureless hamburger flipper jobs without health care. Folks, I'll tell you, if we had our news media of today back in the days of Herbert Hoover we would have never had a Depression, because it woulda never been reported as a depression. This isn't even...

The economy has added more jobs than expected in each of the past three months, pushing down the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent and marking the best six-month streak of jobs numbers since 2008. But President Obama’s former economic adviser said today that this seemingly rosy economic picture probably won’t last. “I think the main thing that [President Obama] ought to worry anybody is that the growth rate is probably not as sustainable as at high a rate as it’s been, so the pace of expansion, which for six months has been pretty impressive, it may just slow down a...

Fmr. chief economic advisor on Recovery Act, unemployment rate

Former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and senior economic adviser to President Obama appeared on FOX News' "Hannity" to defend the President and the economy. Earlier in August President Obama cited the earthquake and tsuanmi in Japan and the Arab Spring as reasons why the economy has not improved. Goolsbee in his own words: "In the year 2010 which is when most of the clips when the president was saying we were going to grow again. We were growing and over that 17 months we added two-and-a-half million jobs. "Now, at the beginning of this year we get...

Outgoing White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee went on the attack against Standard & Poor’s on Sunday, charging the agency’s credit downgrade was based on “questionable mathematics.” The rating agency lowered the U.S. credit rating on Friday from a top AAA to AA+, but not before the Treasury Department discovered an accounting error by Standard & Poor’s and urged the agency not to downgrade. “They made a $2 trillion math error, and they didn’t check their work,” Goolsbee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Goolsbee also called for policymakers to focus not just on the deficit but also on longer-term...

Meager 18,000 increase in June heightens worries over economyWASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A disappointing U.S. jobs report has stunned Wall Street and triggered a fresh round of political recriminations as to who and what’s to blame. The economy added a meager 18,000 jobs in June, stoking worries the U.S. economy is slumping again. See story on June jobs data. Here is a sample of reaction on Wall Street and in Washington. • “Today’s report is more evidence that the misguided ‘stimulus’ spending binge, excessive regulations, and an overwhelming national debt continue to hold back private-sector job creation in our country.” —...

There are quite a lot of opinions about Obama's reelectability in the face of bad economic news. The national debt is up, economic growth is slow, jobs are not being produced as promised, house prices continue to fall, and employers are complaining about policy uncertainty.1 So it will be very interesting to see just where we are, how we got here, and how the economy will effect Obama's reelection. Obama's Economy There is little doubt that today's economy belongs to Presient Barack Obama, regardless of his blaming George W. Bush for all of his problems. "Now, my administration has...

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,...

Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, plans to return to teaching economics at the University of Chicago this fall, the White House announced Monday night. Goolsbee has been on leave for four years from the university’s Booth School of Business and could have lost his tenured position at Chicago, where he was a professor for 14 years before joining the administration, if he did not return, an official said. Goolsbee, one of Obama’s longest serving aides, was an economic adviser on the 2004 Senate campaign, and the senior economic adviser on the 2008 presidential campaign.He...

If last week wasn’t bad enough for President Obama with the release of a series of dire economic reports, this week is looking even worse, kicking off with the resignation on Monday evening of his chief economist Austan Goolsbee. On Friday Goolsbee struggled to explain an unexpected rise in unemployment figures, comically describing them as a “bump in the road”, hardly reassuring news to the nearly 14 million Americans who are now out of work. After the announcement, Barack Obama paid tribute to his close friend and soon to be former adviser, with a surreal claim that his administration is...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top White House economist Austan Goolsbee said on Monday he was stepping down, marking the exit of one of President Barack Obama's closest aides at a time when new signs of weakness have emerged in the economy. Less than a year after he was named chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Goolsbee plans to return to his teaching job at the University of Chicago, the Obama administration said in a statement. Goolsbee's departure leaves Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as the sole remaining senior member of the original economic team. Goolsbee and Obama got to...

WASHINGTON -- Key White House economics adviser Austan D. Goolsbee will resign from his role as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, it was announced Monday. A statement from the White House said Goolsbee will return to his position as an economics professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in the fall term. "Prior to his time in the Obama Administration, he was a professor at the University of Chicago for fourteen years," the statement said.

"Our effort now as a government should be to get the private sector to help them stand up and lead the recovery," Goolsbee told "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpour, citing efforts on regulatory review, while maintaining policies such as reduced payroll taxes through the end of the year. "We've got to rely on policies that are trying to leverage the private sector and give incentives to private sector to be doing the growth." Goolsbee cautioned against reading too much into the report, saying "stiff headwinds" from shocks such as the disaster in Japan and higher gas prices impacted the employment...

OK, the unemployment is now down to 8.8 percent, and the economy added 216,000 jobs last month. Here is the political economy of the situation, which is not as good for Team Obama as you might think: 1) Let’s not overstate the strength of the report: a) based on last two nasty downturns, 1974-75 and 1981-82, jobs should be growing roughly 400K a month; b) nominal wage growth over both the last quarter and year have both been 1.7% vs. 2.1% inflation; c) the number of people who have been unemployed less than five weeks rose by 59K, first increase...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Wednesday said higher oil prices caused by Middle East unrest must be monitored but would not stall the U.S. recovery, while reiterating a warning on the risks posed by global imbalances. "Thus far, they're up, but we're not forecasting -- and you haven't seen the private forecasters forecasting -- that at these levels they would derail the recovery," said top White House economist Austan Goolsbee. U.S. crude oil reached a 28-month high of $100 a barrel on Wednesday as violence in OPEC producer Libya caused output there to be reduced and investors bet...