Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by Associated Press
HONOLULU - Among the first announcements President Barack Obama will make upon returning from his Hawaiian vacation is his choice for top economic adviser, a decision that could signal a new direction for the administration as it struggles to jumpstart the economy and wrestle down unemployment.
With the unemployment rate at (9.8) percent, the private sector struggling to maintain steady growth and the public ranking the economy as the top concern, Obama's handling of the issue over the coming months is certain to play a central role in his reelection bid. The question is, with whom will he entrust to help shape (and sell) his economic vision?
It's far more than a personnel move. The replacement for the outgoing director of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, will have a guiding hand in nearly every economic decision the Obama administration makes, and the president's choice is being closely watched for signs of where he wants to take his economic agenda in the second half of his term.
Will he tap the business world with a figure such as Roger Altman, an investment banker and Clinton administration alumnus who might carry too much baggage from his association with Wall Street? Will he turn to academia instead, calling on a scholar such Yale President Richard Levin? Or will he go with deeply experienced insiders such as deficit hawk Gene Sperling at the Treasury Department or Jason Furman, the council's deputy director?
With the unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, the private sector struggling to maintain steady growth and the public ranking the economy as the top concern, Obama's handling of the issue over the coming months is certain to play a central role in his reelection bid.
The selection process for the council post has dragged on for months. Summers announced his resignation in September, and many in the administration knew well before then that he planned to return to Harvard University after serving two years at the White House.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said he expects Obama to make an announcement in early January, and blamed any delay on the frenzied legislative session that consumed the White House through the end of the year.
The administration's thinking on how to fill the job has evolved since Summers announced his resignation. The initial view - both inside and outside the White House - was that Obama should name a business leader to the post, in an attempt to give the private sector a greater voice in the administration and ease the perception that the president is anti-business.
But the administration now believes the relationship between Obama and the business community has started to thaw. For example, both sides praised each other following Obama's meeting with CEOs earlier this month. The White House has grown more willing to find another prominent job for a private sector appointee while leaving the council post to an economic heavyweight who can coordinate the advice Obama is receiving from throughout the administration.
"To get a business person in there, it seems like an odd place," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. "And if he does need someone from business, I don't think he would want someone from Wall Street."
It's that Wall Street connection that's been a knock against one of the leading candidates for the job, Altman, founder of Evercore Partners. Altman does have government experience, though, having served as deputy treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton.
Sperling, another top contender, has also dabbled in Wall Street, advising Goldman Sachs and other financial firms, although he's most well-known for his work in the Clinton and Obama administrations, including his current post as counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Sperling helped craft the 1993 Deficit Reduction Act, and his appointment could show Obama is serious about his pledge to address the mounting debt and deficit next year.
Levin, who as president of Yale shares Summers' academic pedigree, is likely to favor stepped up Wall Street regulation. Furman is also said to be in the running for a promotion from the deputy's job.
Both Sperling and Furman would bring an insider's knowledge of the Obama White House and the president's economic policies to the job, attributes that may not necessarily be to their benefit. Critics have accused Obama's economic advisers of not fully grasping the depths of the crisis, and the team's prediction that the president's massive stimulus bill would keep unemployment below 8 percent has caused headaches within the administration.
Selecting an outsider to fill the top economic job would help Obama counter the notion that he's too insular and unwilling to accept advice from outside the administration. He filled two other high-profile vacancies on his economic team this year from within the administration, replacing Budget Director Peter Orszag with State Department official Jacob Lew, and Council of Economic Advisers chair Christina Romer with Austan Goolsbee, who was serving as a member of the council.
"They should be looking to take things in a new direction," Baker said. "I don't think more of the same is the answer."
Beyond the economic qualifications of the candidates he's considering, the president is also believed to be looking for a council director who can serve as both a good manager and a team player. For all of Summers' intellectual heft, he brought along a healthy ego and an often prickly temperament. Rumors swirled of conflict among Summers, Orszag and Romer, a rarity in a White House run by a president with little patience for drama.
Showing posts with label top economic adviser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label top economic adviser. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Good Riddance, Larry Summers!
by Matthew Rothschild - Thursday, September 23, 2010 by The Progressive
Good riddance, Larry Summers.
Obama’s top economic adviser is going back to Harvard by the end of the year, and Harvard can have him.
Summers has a resume of disaster.
As chief economist at the World Bank, he proposed dumping the West’s toxic waste on the Third World.
As Clinton’s Treasury undersecretary, he forced privatization on the Russian people, who experienced enormous poverty as a result. (See Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.)
And when he was Clinton’s Treasury secretary, he helped deregulate Wall Street, which led to the current crisis.
When he was President of Harvard, his sexism did him in.
Under Obama, Summers and Timothy Geithner were largely responsible for understimulating the economy.
And Summers and Timothy Geithner were largely responsible for not extracting meaningful concessions from the banks when they were on their deathbeds. “The first big economic debate of the new administration was over whether the government should use the leverage of TARP to force new behavior on lenders (credit was frozen) and on companies awarding outlandish bonuses,” writes Jonathan Alter in his book on Obama’s first year, The Promise. “In a meeting less than two weeks after Obama took office, [Presidential adviser David] Axelrod argued yes, but Summers and Geithner opposed attaching big strings to bailouts. They thought it wrong to kick banks when they were down, not to mention violating their contracts.”
Wrong to kick banks that had destroyed the whole economy?
Alter quotes Summers as saying: “Just as war had unintended victims, bailouts had unintended wealthy beneficiaries.” Unintended my ass!
Summers helped land Obama in the fix he’s in today: unemployment’s very high, resentment at the banks is even higher, and few people can feel the economic benefits that Obama and Summers say they’ve brought about.
So adios, Larry.
Now Obama has a chance to put a progressive economist in.
How about Paul Krugman of the New York Times? (no--jef)
Or Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia? (maybe so...-jef)
Both have Nobel Prizes in economics.
Obama sure could use their wisdom, their tenacity, and their humanity now.
And so could we.
Good riddance, Larry Summers.
Obama’s top economic adviser is going back to Harvard by the end of the year, and Harvard can have him.
Summers has a resume of disaster.
As chief economist at the World Bank, he proposed dumping the West’s toxic waste on the Third World.
As Clinton’s Treasury undersecretary, he forced privatization on the Russian people, who experienced enormous poverty as a result. (See Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.)
And when he was Clinton’s Treasury secretary, he helped deregulate Wall Street, which led to the current crisis.
When he was President of Harvard, his sexism did him in.
Under Obama, Summers and Timothy Geithner were largely responsible for understimulating the economy.
And Summers and Timothy Geithner were largely responsible for not extracting meaningful concessions from the banks when they were on their deathbeds. “The first big economic debate of the new administration was over whether the government should use the leverage of TARP to force new behavior on lenders (credit was frozen) and on companies awarding outlandish bonuses,” writes Jonathan Alter in his book on Obama’s first year, The Promise. “In a meeting less than two weeks after Obama took office, [Presidential adviser David] Axelrod argued yes, but Summers and Geithner opposed attaching big strings to bailouts. They thought it wrong to kick banks when they were down, not to mention violating their contracts.”
Wrong to kick banks that had destroyed the whole economy?
Alter quotes Summers as saying: “Just as war had unintended victims, bailouts had unintended wealthy beneficiaries.” Unintended my ass!
Summers helped land Obama in the fix he’s in today: unemployment’s very high, resentment at the banks is even higher, and few people can feel the economic benefits that Obama and Summers say they’ve brought about.
So adios, Larry.
Now Obama has a chance to put a progressive economist in.
How about Paul Krugman of the New York Times? (no--jef)
Or Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia? (maybe so...-jef)
Both have Nobel Prizes in economics.
Obama sure could use their wisdom, their tenacity, and their humanity now.
And so could we.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Obama aide’s exit could be prelude to more changes
Obama's loss of top economic adviser Lawrence Summers could set stage for post-election changes.
By The Associated Press - Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
The departure of President Barack Obama's top economic adviser at the end of the year could provide the White House with an opportunity to revamp its economic team after the November elections, when voters are expected to take out their anxieties on Democrats.
The White House said Tuesday that Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, would leave at the end of the year to return to Harvard University. Though administration officials said Obama had known for some time that Summers would depart this year, news of his pending exit comes amid deep concern over the sluggish pace of the recovery, as well as criticism of the team that conceived the administration's economic policies.
Summers was the chief architect of many of those policies, playing a central role in the massive economic stimulus and the government bailout of the auto industry. He also was an advocate for the financial regulatory legislation Obama signed into law earlier this year.
But with those issues behind him and the end of his two-year leave from Harvard looming, a senior administration official said Summers felt it was the right time to go.
Summers, who served as treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, hadn't planned to return to government, the official said, but felt compelled to do so by the president and the economic conditions facing the country. He only wanted to stay for a year, but Obama asked him to stay through 2010 to oversee financial regulation and the implementation of the stimulus, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House matters.
In a statement, the president said he was grateful for Summers' service during a time of "great peril for our country."
"While we have much work ahead to repair the damage done by the recession, we are on a better path thanks in no small measure to Larry's wise counsel," Obama said.
Obama has already lost two other high-level economic advisers: budget director Peter Orszag and the chief of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, both of whom resigned this summer. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would be the only one of Obama's top-tier economic advisers to remain with the administration should he stay through the end of the year. (and he should have been the first one out the door!--jef)
There was speculation that Obama might turn to a corporate executive to replace Summers as a way to deflect criticism that his administration is antibusiness. Also, the White House is acutely aware that there are no women in top economic posts following Romer's departure; nor do the current advisers have significant private-sector experience.
Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the House minority leader, called on Obama last month to fire Summers, Geithner and other members of the economic team, saying, "Never before has the need for a fresh start in Washington been more pressing."
Though the White House dismissed Boehner's calls as politically motivated, Obama never ruled out changes in his advisory team. And with unemployment hovering near double digits and the public increasingly worried about the pace of the recovery, it's likely Obama would have had to make changes after the midterms had advisers like Summers and Romer not chosen to leave on their own.
Changes probably will extend beyond the economic team. Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is considering leaving the White House to run for Chicago mayor, (another really good thing that needed to happen--jef) and officials have said other aides also could leave after the elections.
Summers has a reputation as a brilliant, if occasionally smug, economist. During the debate over overhauling the nation's financial regulations, liberals bristled at Summers' rejection of proposals to place limits on the size of banks. They held him partly responsible for the deregulation of banks that occurred in 1999 while he was treasury secretary.
When he returns to Harvard, he will be going back to his roots. At age 28 he became one of the youngest professors to receive tenure at Harvard. After leaving the Clinton Cabinet in 2001, he returned to Harvard as its new president, where he had a tense relationship with the university faculty. It erupted when he argued that gender differences explained why fewer women pursued math and science careers. He resigned in 2006.
By The Associated Press - Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
The departure of President Barack Obama's top economic adviser at the end of the year could provide the White House with an opportunity to revamp its economic team after the November elections, when voters are expected to take out their anxieties on Democrats.
The White House said Tuesday that Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, would leave at the end of the year to return to Harvard University. Though administration officials said Obama had known for some time that Summers would depart this year, news of his pending exit comes amid deep concern over the sluggish pace of the recovery, as well as criticism of the team that conceived the administration's economic policies.
Summers was the chief architect of many of those policies, playing a central role in the massive economic stimulus and the government bailout of the auto industry. He also was an advocate for the financial regulatory legislation Obama signed into law earlier this year.
But with those issues behind him and the end of his two-year leave from Harvard looming, a senior administration official said Summers felt it was the right time to go.
Summers, who served as treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, hadn't planned to return to government, the official said, but felt compelled to do so by the president and the economic conditions facing the country. He only wanted to stay for a year, but Obama asked him to stay through 2010 to oversee financial regulation and the implementation of the stimulus, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House matters.
In a statement, the president said he was grateful for Summers' service during a time of "great peril for our country."
"While we have much work ahead to repair the damage done by the recession, we are on a better path thanks in no small measure to Larry's wise counsel," Obama said.
Obama has already lost two other high-level economic advisers: budget director Peter Orszag and the chief of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, both of whom resigned this summer. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would be the only one of Obama's top-tier economic advisers to remain with the administration should he stay through the end of the year. (and he should have been the first one out the door!--jef)
There was speculation that Obama might turn to a corporate executive to replace Summers as a way to deflect criticism that his administration is antibusiness. Also, the White House is acutely aware that there are no women in top economic posts following Romer's departure; nor do the current advisers have significant private-sector experience.
Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the House minority leader, called on Obama last month to fire Summers, Geithner and other members of the economic team, saying, "Never before has the need for a fresh start in Washington been more pressing."
Though the White House dismissed Boehner's calls as politically motivated, Obama never ruled out changes in his advisory team. And with unemployment hovering near double digits and the public increasingly worried about the pace of the recovery, it's likely Obama would have had to make changes after the midterms had advisers like Summers and Romer not chosen to leave on their own.
Changes probably will extend beyond the economic team. Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is considering leaving the White House to run for Chicago mayor, (another really good thing that needed to happen--jef) and officials have said other aides also could leave after the elections.
Summers has a reputation as a brilliant, if occasionally smug, economist. During the debate over overhauling the nation's financial regulations, liberals bristled at Summers' rejection of proposals to place limits on the size of banks. They held him partly responsible for the deregulation of banks that occurred in 1999 while he was treasury secretary.
When he returns to Harvard, he will be going back to his roots. At age 28 he became one of the youngest professors to receive tenure at Harvard. After leaving the Clinton Cabinet in 2001, he returned to Harvard as its new president, where he had a tense relationship with the university faculty. It erupted when he argued that gender differences explained why fewer women pursued math and science careers. He resigned in 2006.
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