Robert Gibbs: Obama’s Economic Team ‘Exhausted’
**Written by Doug Powers
Imagine how tired they’d be if they were actually doing a good job.
From The Hill:
President Obama’s economic team is exhausted, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, and that is one the reasons Christina Romer announced her departure Thursday.
Gibbs dismissed reports that Romer, the outgoing chairwoman of the president’s council for economic affairs, was leaving because of conflicts with Larry Summers, the director of the National Economic Council.
The press secretary told The Hill on Friday that Romer and the rest of the economic team have worked the equivalent of six years during the 18 months they’ve been in office, and Romer wanted to return to her normal life.
What a load of Pelosi that claim is. So a member of the economic team who stays with the administration through a full four-year term will have worked the equivalent of about 16 years? That’s certainly a quicker way to qualify for your pension.
Let’s assume for argument sake that a hard-working economics staffer under “normal” conditions works five days a week and 14 hours a day (could be much more, could be much less). That’s about 260 working days a year — times six years is 1,560 days. At 14 hours a day, that’s 21,840 working hours in six years. Subtract three weeks worth of time for vacations every year, and that’s about 20,580 working hours.
To pack the same thing in 18 months — about 547 days — the economics staffer would have to work seven days a week and 37.6 hours a day. I know such a number is possible in the world of Beltway accounting (“you get half, I get half, and he gets the other half”), but not in the real world.
Even if we consider a “regular” 40-hour work-week over six years, include three weeks worth of vacation time per year, and pack that far less aggressive schedule into an 18 month time frame, the worker in question would have to put in almost 22 hours a day, seven days a week in order to perform that six years worth of work in a year and a half.
We know Gibbs has a flair for the ridiculous, but he’s somehow managed to out-do himself. Besides, who cares how hard Obama’s economists are working? Gilligan worked hard to get off the island too — so what?
And if my math is a little off here, all I know is that it’s a lot more accurate than any administration economist working for a boss who once reminded everyone that accounting is an “inexact science.” I’ll say.
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
See what others have said
Note from Michelle: This section is for comments from michellemalkin.com's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that I agree with or endorse any particular comment just because I let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with my terms of use may lose his or her posting privilege.
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
 |
Nancy Pelosi Explains Why Obama Flip-Flopped on Super PACs
February 9, 2012 10:08 PM by Doug Powers
50 Comments
Report: Solyndra Sold Assets Cheap to Entity with Close Ties to Investors
February 9, 2012 10:08 AM by Doug Powers
49 CommentsFormer Democrat Rep. Regrets Vote for Obamacare Due to Contraceptive Coverage
February 7, 2012 03:40 PM by Doug Powers
75 Comments
Middle Class Payroll Tax Cut Extension Comes Courtesy of Mortgage Fees on Home Buyers
February 6, 2012 01:36 PM by Doug Powers
35 CommentsHiring Spree in NYC
February 1, 2012 02:47 PM by Doug Powers
43 CommentsMr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants
January 27, 2012 10:35 AM by Michelle Malkin
138 CommentsStimulus-Backed ‘Green’ Bankruptcy of the Week: Ener1
January 26, 2012 03:06 PM by Doug Powers
67 Comments
Obama and Jan Brewer Have Words on Airport Tarmac; Update: Brewer Book Sales Skyrocket
January 25, 2012 09:54 PM by Doug Powers
165 Comments
Obama’s Green Robber Barons
January 25, 2012 09:13 AM by Michelle Malkin
89 Comments
Categories: Barack Obama,fiscal stimulus,Public Officials
Patterico
» NYT hails the safety net: Poor hardest hitAmSpecBlog
» Weekend Political Wrap-UpThe Hill
» Rep. Ron Paul not conceding Maine voteJustOneMinute
» I Guess I'm Still Stuck On StupidDaily Caller
» Obama’s deputy downplays church-state controversyRiehl World View
» Whitney Houston: If I should stay I would only be in your way
Down to the lace trim on his panties.
Whahhhahahahahahaaaaaaahhhhh.
That’s a corker Gibbs.
Yes, destroying the economy, or at least a recovery, is positively grueling.
It must wear the white house staffers plum out running in little circles day and night.
I guess Romer’s like Tony Hayward, she wants her life back -
It’s tough work pushing lies uphill.
Destroying a country is hard work.
Cloward Piven is hard.
If you killed millions of jobs, you would be exhausted too.
Romer was angry that she missed a sale on some fugly Dolce & Gabbana shoes.
Maybe it was because she was on Fox news and got some acutal questions about the economy and they questioned her math? It would most likely be she couldn’t remember which lie to tell for the day.
L
Obama’s team is exhausted arguing with those on their team who were advocating lower taxes and fiscal restraint. Now that those trouble makers are gone, it should be less tiring for them. They are now free to concentrate on the real enemy: ordinary American citizens who work for a living.
Lying is exhausting….maintaining lies, even more so.
Can you imagine how much easier, and quicker an economic recovery would happen if the administration had a hands off approach?
Here’s their quandary: they cannot simultaneously loot the treasury, pay off their cohorts, and maintain domestic tranquility without resorting to manipulation of the numbers, the facts, and the truth.
The opposite of what they say is always the truth.
Of course they’re exhausted. The economy is tough.
What a bunch of idiots. Repeal the 16th Amendment and pass the FairTax. The economy will recover by itself.
Some of you are missing the boat completely on Romer and the Council of Economic Advisors. She quit because she had no access to Obama. As Chairman of the Economic Council, she was the face of whatever Obama decided. It does not reflect poorly on her character that she was spinning a bad economic plan that didn’t agree with. That is what presidential advisors are supposed to do.
The real story is that the main advocates of fiscal restraint and lower taxes, Romer and Orszag, are now gone. You guys are trashing the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Absolutely right! Just take a recent example from Gibbs:
“The first lady is on a private trip. She is a private citizen and is the mother of a daughter on a private trip. And I think I’d leave it at that,” Gibbs said.
In other words, she is just an ordinary person on an ordinary vacation, just like you or me, right? Couldn’t be any more normal, right?
Yeah, sure. Absolutely absurd.
That Gibbs is such the comedian. But as with all comedians, the worst part is dying on stage with a terrible routine. Remember these last words:
“Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
George Bernard Shaw (also attributed to Donald Wolfit and Edmund Gween).
So with that in mind, at least we can recognize that Gibbs is doing this administration’s hard work.
Another way to look at this is that the administration’s ranks are becoming thinner of respectable people to to mask the White House’s true character. This administration is run by a small circle of thugs consisting of Michelle Obama, Rahm Emanuelle, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod. Everyone else is for show and cannon fodder.
Christina Romer was not part of that.
Let’s not forget to add that she is financing this trip from the taxes of many private citizens who happen to be mothers of daughters themselves.
Another thing to remember about the Council of Economic Advisor is that it is the sole purview of Larry Summers who has been a key player in creating the root causes of our current economic mess: “too big to fail” banks, unregulated derivatives and the “ownership” society subsidized by Fannie/Freddie. No one stands in his way and I predict that the next victim will be Geithner.
Well gibbs, this bho, team, and you sure give ‘private citizen’ Rush, Sarah, Glenn, and many others heck for what they do and say! Gibbs is a real joke!
L
***
BELTWAY BOB GIBBS is a fitting replacement for (deceased!) Saddam Hussein’s BAGDAD BOB clown propaganda prince.
***
Continuously lying is hard work. Good thing the AMERICAN PRAVDA media helps BB out with the “heavy lifting”. Maybe we could send him for a little taxpayer paid R&R with the Michelle Antoinette entourage in Spain. Must be room for a cot in one of the many el primo hotel suites.
***
John Bibb
***
Comeon Gibbs, you can do better than that! Give us the lowdown on exactly what good the Economic Team has done for our ailing economy… except cause it to take a nose dive. It was ailing, pre-Obama’s inaugural day, true. But it only had sniffles, not on its deathbed. Now, with all the trifling that Obama and his economic team did, it is on life support!
His economic team is bailing out, so we can concentrate for a minute on the reason Obama is exhausted.
Obama’s exhaustion can easily be traced to his failure to hang up his campaign shirt. He has worn it to tatters, Gibbs! Add to that the rounds of golf, the body surfing to show off his “abs” while vacationing here, there, and everywhere, oooh, a man can only do so much!
Now, had he rested that finger-pointing propensity, he would have learned a bit of what he needed to to, on the job. One of the lessons: appoint competent, knowledgeable people. Not cronies. You’d think he knew enough to get people with the knowhow, inasmuch as he is very much the newbie in governance, management, executive duties. As it is, his journeyman performance is a huge disappointment to the people. He won’t be given the same task in 2012!
Oooh, that would drive Michelle to revert to her pre-”for the first time in her adult life” position! Her pride in America will take its own nose dive. Poor babies!
I’m sure Gibbs was using Da One’s work habits as his yardstick, Doug. If you used the average hours Da One has worked this year, I have no doubt that his economic team has worked 4 years worth at that rate.
Hope is not a plan; not all change is good. WE are the civilian national security force. If the Federal government WON’T protect the border that they claim in court is their job and their job only, why won’t judges find them in contempt? The resistance is here; the resistance is now. RESIST!!!!!!
ECS
Its hard work to screw up the economy so badly AND put money in the pockets of your cohorts and political allies.
I’m sure they are tired.
The people looking for work are tired.
There, I fixed it.
I wonder…
When the American electorate votes out the progressives, and yes, the not-so-bright Democrats who ‘fell on their swords’ for the Dark
LordLoad o’ Crap, will he, Obama, react by stating his true beliefs?“Uh-h, um-m, although I don’t have all the facts, I think it’s safe to say most thinking inner-city folks believe that, um, the voters…acted stupidly.”
“So, let me be clear…the needy in the black community have a right to be angry…but not at me! Those responsible are the incompassionate, hate-monging racists in the Republican Party, who showed up at the polling places in greater numbers.”
“Having said that, it is unconceiveable to me that some modicum of voter fraud wasn’t perpetrated by THE Republicans, to steal this election away from the people. So…yes, I feel your anger. They will do and say anything to stop MY work on behalf of the American people!”
“If ratified, the results of this election will undoubtedly take us back to the failed policies of the Bush administration!”
Any takers?
I Want Your Money
the movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wty7974IKg
But… Math is HARD….
And spinning takes a LOT of energy…
Sooo… spinning Math based economic numbers is Super Duper double dang Hard…
Obama economic policy:
When in trouble, when in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.
Well, they will get no sympathy from me. Maybe if they actually knew how to fix problems that would be one thing, but these clowns came in with a hidden agenda to cram socialism down our throats while they spun it as this wonderful model of their version of utopia. If they had stuck to the truth rather than lies, life may have been kinder. They are getting what they deserve for the lies, corruption and deception. Change we can believe in turned out to be a recycled communist plot. These whinny Constitution shredding, American haters need to get deported!
Of course their exhausted. They are out of idea, and the ones they have managed to get into policy and action have failed. It is difficult to stare such failure in the face and accept blame. It is far easier to deflect the blame elsewhere – what politicians normally do, and the slink away to write or teach another generation of idiots about those mean Republicans and those louses in the private sector.
One has to wonder what truly bad news is coming in that what’s her name jumped ship and we’re hearing about the “team” being tired…..
Destroying the country is hard work.
Message to Gibs from the movie “The Rock”
John Mason: Are you sure you’re ready for this?
Stanley Goodspeed: I’ll do my best.
John Mason: Your “best”! Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and @@@@ the prom queen.
Oddly enough, a Dem running for State House came by this morning and she claims to be for lower taxes and fiscal restraint.
Totally agree.
Did she weigh the same as a duck?
Intellectually speaking, except for Romer, this team was exhausted in about 1933.
Known around the White House as the “Politburo”.
“Did she weigh the same as a duck?”
So if she floats we can burn her?
If she weighs the same as a duck, it means she’s made of wood, which proves conclusively that she’s a witch.
So yes, if she floats you can burn her.
When everything they say and do works the opposite of what they expect, they should expect to work a lot of overtime trying to figure out what they did wrong.
If they’d just have done nothing, their job would be a lot easier and everyone (including themselves) would be doing a lot better in much less time.
For these fools the old term ‘Mental Exhaustion’ comes to mind. The kind where a rubber room was the fix.
Maybe Gibbsy meant that all 5,000 of O-Bama-Lama-Ding-Dong’s advisers combined had managed to work 6 years’ worth of hours. Not so amazing when you think of it that way…
Fitting. Gibbs’ math is on a par with that of the “economic team.”
Post of the week!!!
They are working overtime to figure out what comes after a trillion–let’s hope they fail–as Rush would say. Gibbs is a disgrace to the University system of North Carolina and that’s saying something.
Also, she turned me into a newt. But I got better.
So what? Somebody should ask Gibbs how many years worth of work our guys do during a 12 month tour in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I spent 22 years in the Navy. The typical work week, at sea, is 100 hours and that’s 7 days a week.
The Pillsbury dough boy wears lace undies? Who knew?
Fixed it for you.
They keep defying the laws of economics and expect the exconomy to work. They are either incompetent, stupid, or evil. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and going with incompetent.
Read New Deal or Raw Deal by Burton Folsom. He shows that SecTreas Morgenthau, while speaking to the democrats on the House Ways and Means committee in 1939, brought to their attention that after 7 years of the “New Deal” unemployment was still at 20%. All FDR managed to do was to spend billions and put future generations in debt. Morgenthau was aghast at that.
Now we have the press covering for Obrainless and his 20% unemployment. Thank God for the 22nd amendment. I hope…
And that is the truth.
Exhausted? In the sense of bankrupt and with respect to their morals and intellect, then I’d agree.
And as far as propaganda mouthpieces go, I am conflicted about who is more repulsively contemptible, Gibberish or Bill Burton.
Hey Gibbs,
How about spending half as much time as I am doing trying to find a job that is somewhat even romotely equal with my Bachelors degree and level of experience?
I am one of those underemployed Americans that doesn’t show up on the stats. I have one job on paper (only go in if called and haven’t been in since Feb) and the only thing I have been able to find is working in a nursing home as a CNA where a trained chimp can do my job.
GSP
You got better only because a ram’s bladder, in addition to preventing earthquakes, also has healing properties.
Of course, that applies only if the little pebbles under the ram’s feet can float.
They’re exhausted?! Hell, I’m totally spent! More spent than Ensign Pulver on “Liberty Call” at a local cathouse in Port Elysium!
What I meant to say is, my wallet is empty too!
Why didn’t he just say, “I’m not aware of any specific reasons why she is leaving. I have not had time to review any of the specifics” as he usually does?
Just got home from the Freedom Concert here in my beautiful home town, Mason, OH. Obama’s team may be exhausted but conservatives and independents in Ohio are far from it. 14,000 patriots!
Charlie Daniels – in a word, unbelievable. Michael W. Smith was excellent doing his thing and well, Lynyrd Skynyrd was Lynyrd Skynyrd. Loud and Proud.
Oliver North was strong, Bill ‘Willie’ Cunningham was on as usual and Sean Hannity conducted the whole thing. He threw more footballs tonight than Peyton Manning does in a game. Great time!
Just checking my own definition of a hard working economic staffer. At 49 weeks worth of work (245 working days at five days a week) in a year, 9 hours of work a day, over 6 years, it’s still not possible. the math goes like this:
245 * 9 * 6 = 13,230 hours in six years.
13,230 / 547 = roughly 24.19 hours per day in order to hit my much lower standards of hard work, which is more in line with most of America…
And that’s not counting drills….
Good grief! I doubt they even know what work is.
Economics is HARD.
And they just can’t figure out why their brilliant plans aren’t working! This should totally work! Karl Marx said so!
Obviously, they are exhausted from trying to roll the Socialist/Marxist stone up the hill, against the forces of nature, the whole way.
They should give up and allow gravity to place the stone where it belongs – at the bottom of the hill.
They took his quote out of context.
Obama out there telling those lies about the economy and then the economists having to get him some kind of figures for him that it sure seemed like 18 years.
Having Obama in office has exhausted ME.
I want my country back.
That makes me want to take an icepick to my mind’s eye.
Just like a lazy thief who discovers that a life of crime can be harder work than actually holding down a real job, President Obama’s economic team is finding out that trying to convince the country that the recession is over by creating fake jobs and fudging statistics can be harder work than simply doing what’s necessary to encourage the private sector to create real jobs.
In fact, by lowering taxes and simplifying job-killing regulations, not only do you encourage job creation but you can do it with fewer bureaucrats and a smaller government. Creating a leftist utopia is hard work. Convincing the public they are better off in a leftist utopia with never-ending regulations and ever-increasing taxes is even harder.
Short commute before and after work though… lol
I don’t know if we heard it somewhere or thought it up ourselves, but in our home Gibbs is referred to as Beltway Bob. He’s not much different from Bagdad Bob.
Hey…completely destroying a nation in less than two years especially when it is the destruction of everything that took over two hundred thirty years to build and accomplish IS exhausting. i am all for every last one of them taking a two year and five month holiday. I’d get behind funding that.
Well, yes; doing nothing is a very difficult job – you never know when you’re finished.
If I am blessed with anything at all, it’s a logical mind and an ability to learn from my mistakes.
That’s why it is especially confusing for me to witness a replay of F.D.R.’s New Deal (a plan that DID NOT WORK) as the way out for our troubled economy. Even to the point where some lefist fool recommended a CC camp-like government jobs program. Like we need another Govt.program!
I really think if something works…like lowering corporate and personal income taxes as a way to jumpstart the economy…let’s do it!And if raising taxes and handcuffing busineses with more infernal “oversight”(read…… control)worsens the syptoms, why do socialists continue to try these measures?
The obvious definition of insanity. And the left actually thinks the results will be different this time!
Amazing.Yet predictable.
Pasadena Phil said:
Another way to look at this is that the administration’s ranks are becoming thinner of respectable people to to mask the White House’s true character. This administration is run by a small circle of thugs consisting of Michelle Obama, Rahm Emanuelle, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod. Everyone else is for show and cannon fodder.
Christina Romer was not part of that.
Nope….no going for it. Everybody in obeyme’s administration knows exactly who he is, who his czars (thugs) are, and what role they’re supposed to play. She wants out before the water boils, and gee, gets her job back teaching at, of all places, Berkley. They are all scum, including those who voted for this imposter.
Better: Cloward-Piven ain’t easy.
Ahem.
Cloward-Pivening ain’t easy.
One wonders how serious he is if he is satisfied with the minimum 15 pieces…of flair.