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The discussions over Obama’s announced appointments are interesting. For all the talk about how Obama’s Econ Team are acolytes of Evil Deregulating Deficit Hawk Rubin, they’re currently telling Obama to screw the deficit and do some Keynesian pump-priming. And not just for banks, either, but to entities that will actually inject the cash into the larger economy.
As for Bob Gates staying on as Secretary of Defense, people forget that he’s part of Brent Scowcroft’s circle, and Scowcroft opposed invading Iraq in 2002. (It was almost certainly Gates who advised Obama to put Eric Shinseki, another Iraq War skeptic, in as VA head.) But Gates’ associations are never allowed to count for him, even as Obama’s economic team’s associations with Rubin are made to count against them.
And it’s not as if their Rubin associations are the only ones that they possess. Three of the Evil Rubinites are also associated with Joseph Stiglitz:
Obama’s designated White House budget director and the current director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, and economic aides Jason Furman and Laura D’Andrea all worked for Sebago Associates, a now-defunct economic consulting company once chaired by Stiglitz.
While both Furman and Orszag have been called protégés of Rubin, they also worked closely with the more liberal Stiglitz early in their careers.
The economist was also a mentor to Furman and Orszag, whom he taught at Princeton University.
As a graduate student at Harvard University, Furman was hired by Stiglitz for a one-year assignment with President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers — and later followed the senior economist to the World Bank.
“In a group of people who were very good, he turned out to be one of the best,” Stiglitz told The New York Sun in June. “People in economic policy often grasp the big picture, but the details of modeling statistics is not their strength. Jason is unusual in being able to do both of those.”
So who’s Joe Stiglitz? Well, the short version is that he’s the Anti-Rubin. He’s also a Nobel Prize winner. And he also was invited to be on Obama’s economic team, but declined the offer.
And as we already know, Robert Reich, another Anti-Rubin, has been acting as a sort of surrogate for Obama’s economic policies. I can’t imagine that he’d be doing so if he thought that Obama was being mind-controlled from afar by Evil Rubin.
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where’s all the talk about deficit hawks? that’s just a strawman. the issue is what people like summers and geithner have and have not done. they have been instrumental in creating the problems we now face. rubin is a problem only in so far as he can influence policy – not because he was once upon a time a deficit hawk, but because of his actions wrt preventing regulation of otc derivatives and repeal of glass steagall. also, his actions wrt citibank make him look like a self dealing hack.
if you are going to defend obama’s economics team choices, i wish you would not continue to mischaracterize the complaints many of us have been making.
Perhaps PW is talking about Lori Montgomery (from way back in August) of the Washington Post.
Or perhaps she refers to Krugman’s words on the DH’s from this month:
Or a whole host of alleged DH’s who populate the landscape.
Not everything is about the pups.
PW, thanks for the post. I can’t say, however, that I’m in a 100% agreement.
First, this is the first I’ve heard Stiglitz turned down a position on Obama’s team. If so that’s very bad news. FWIW, imho, Stiglitz made a huge error on the Big 2.5 saying they should be allowed to fall into Chapter 11. OT, if he’s not going to take a position with Obama, I wonder if he would like to write for FDL?
IMHO, selise, Ian, and Hugh have been very persuasive that the primary function of Obama’s economic team appears to be to insulate those who made the bad decisions from the understandable consequences of their actions. IMHO, the only people we want on Obama’s team are those that screamed early and loud about lax SEC enforcement, mbs, cds, and increasing leverage limits. When Obama installs people such as Summers, who wasn’t screaming early or loud about those issues, it raises concerns that he’s in there to protect the Senate especially from their complicity, you know the old incumbent protection rackets.
Yeah, I think Reich is in there to try and provide some balance, but nobody in there right mind would turn down a position with Obama’s team. I don’t take as much consolation in it as you do.
ICYMI, this is a really terrific piece from Hugh.
A Christmas list to fix the financial meltdown
If a lot of this isn’t happening very quickly in January, we and the world are in a lot of trouble.
Thanks again for all your fine work here at FDL.
neither of your links are to discussions of problems with obama’s economics team, which i don’t think are characterized by a concern regarding deficit hawks. the complaints lie elsewhere, which was why i objected to this:
however, your larger point is imo a good one – perhaps PW wasn’t referring to previous conversations here (like this one, or this one). hopefully PW will return and clarify what she was referring to.
i’m actually ok with summers or geithner on the team, just not in such key positions – and certainly not so many of the key positions being taken by people of such a narrow ideological perspective (and one that has helped bring about our current problems). my biggest complaint is the absence of people who have been proven right where summers et al have been consistently wrong. ideally, i’d like to see a wide perspective of economic ideas represented.
btw, i agree with you about stiglitz and chapter 11 for gm.
Thanks selise.