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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I can’t imagine that he’d be doing so if he thought that Obama was being mind-controlled from afar by Evil Rubin.

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.

Or perhaps she refers to Krugman’s words on the DH’s from this month:

But the deficit worriers have it all wrong. Under current conditions, there’s no trade-off between what’s good in the short run and what’s good for the long run; strong fiscal expansion would actually enhance the economy’s long-run prospects.

Or a whole host of alleged DH’s who populate the landscape.
Not everything is about the pups.

For all the talk about how Obama’s Econ Team are acolytes of Evil Deregulating Deficit Hawk Rubin,

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.