Saturday, August 7, 2010

Christina Romer out as Chair of CEA

Late this week Christina Romer resigned as Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. She was reported as a key architect of last year's record fiscal stimulus plan and was a deficit dove.

The Washington Post has a story here. The choice of replacement made by the Obama Administration may again be revealing in trying to discern the direction of future fiscal policy. The last key position to be filled, former Clinton Administration fiscal surplus steward Jacob Lew as head of the OMB, was "score one" for the deficit hawks.

3 comments:

googleheim said...

Hi Matt

Do you have any examples and iterations of how the top 2% rich in the USA are heavily dependent on government spending in specific ways that are not accessible to the bottom 50% and the middle 25% ?

How are the top 2% "printing" at the Fed / Tsy for their own benefit ?

How does limiting or stopping the "printing" & gov spending to teachers & welfare recipients benefit these top 2% ?

What industry sectors is this "printing" for the rich taking place for their self-benefit ? energy/healthcare/finance/banking/military ?

I know this assumes that the top 2% affluent are in control in an overly simplistic way, but what if.

Also, why would the top 2% want "printing" or crediting banks to stop for the other 98% but remain only for their own 'revenue stream?'

Krugman has a nice post today, but he does not explicitly explain how balancing the budget will cause a recession because he only says that Clinton 90's boom had a surplus - but we know it was not until his final year that he did that which in turn pulled money out of the real economy and create a recession.

Finally, Italians are pessimistic of going the way of Argentina where the rich are only concerned to hold on to their riches at all costs while the country flagship goes down the drain.

mike norman said...

All of Obama's appointments (old and new) have been deficit hawks. I don't see any reason why he is going to break that trend with this appointment.

Mike Sandifer said...

Speaking of appointments, it is unimaginable why Obama has just sat on the nominations of his three candidates for the FOMC. It just goes to show how incompetent this administration's been on trying to fuel a recovery.