Obama’s egghead economic saboteurs
Academic Legion of Economic Doom: Chart adapted from e21
Obama’s Egghead Economic Saboteurs
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
Official motto of the White House economic team: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, fantasize in the classroom, fail in Washington and then return to the Ivy Tower to train the next generation of egghead economic saboteurs. Life is good for left-wing academics. Everyone else pays dearly.
Take Austan Goolsbee, please. President Obama’s “fresh-faced” University of Chicago econ professor arrived in Washington in December 2008 to fill two slots: chief economist/staff director of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and member of the Council of Economic Advisers. In September 2010, he replaced CEA head and fellow academic Christina Romer, who retreated to the University of California at Berkeley last August when unemployment hit 9.5 percent. (She infamously projected that the Obama stimulus would hold the jobless rate below 8 percent.)
Goolsbee’s primary task: translating all of the administration’s big-government theories for us dummies. As Goolsbee put it to his university’s student newspaper: “We’ve certainly seen in previous crises that it’s quite important to explain things to non-experts. The American people can confront any challenge if they’re comfortable with the approach.”
And what exactly was the nature of Goolsbee’s vaunted expertise? Making money as a business rescue-and-recovery expert without ever having had to meet a payroll.
Goolsbee, the 15th wealthiest member of the Obama administration, has raked in assets valued at between $1,146,000 and $2,715,000. He also pulled in a University of Chicago salary of $465,000 and additional wages and honoraria worth $93,000, according to Washingtonian magazine. As I’ve noted before, the government research fellow and Obama campaign adviser was a champion of extending credit to the un-creditworthy. In a 2007 op-ed for The New York Times, he derided those who called subprime mortgages “irresponsible.” He preferred to describe them as “innovations in the mortgage market” to expand the pool of homebuyers.
Goolsbee’s most recent “innovation”: the “White House White Board,” a weekly video lecture teaching everyone else how to hitch what remains of America’s free-market system to the wagon of the state and how much (or rather, how little) we should make doing it. He illustrated his grand interventionist strategy to pick and choose “Startup America” winners by drawing a trough of broken light bulbs (symbolizing entrepreneurial ideas) piling up in a “Valley of Death” because they lacked government support.
A comical choice of imagery given the Democrats’ enviro-nutty ban on incandescent bulbs. But I digress.
When Goolsbee joined Team Obama, the unemployment rate was at around 6 percent. When he announced his resignation on Monday, the jobless rate stood at 9.1 percent. Romer and Jared Bernstein (former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden) had predicted unemployment would drop every single month after August 2009 due to the Obama stimulus. Bernstein bailed on the administration in April 2011 for the sanctuary of a liberal think-tank. He’ll also now ply his failed wares as a financial pundit.
These hapless command-and-control ideologues were preceded by Peter Orszag, who hung his “Mission Accomplished” banner over the White House budget office in June 2010 after fewer than two years on the job, and by former National Economic Council head and hedge fund manager Larry Summers, who was caught sleeping on the job — literally — more than once during his brief tenure. Summers packed his bags in September. He was followed by Princeton economics professor and former top Obama Treasury Department official Alan Krueger in October 2010.
White House aides have lamented that the economic team is “exhausted.” Apparently, Obama is tired of hearing from them, too. The Hill newspaper reports that he has stopped receiving daily economic briefings that were once treated with the same emergency status as national security briefings. So, the central planners continue to be paid to fail — while their boss looks the other way at the destruction, whistling into what he calls America’s temporary “head winds.”
Nice non-work if you can get it.
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Of course Ilovemycodependency has to have his mommy balance his check book so it is no surprise it doesn’t understand basic economics 101.
Ilovemywilfulblindness – Communism could work if you could control the minds of everyone who participated in the economy.
But, do you really think you could do that?
If he can’t rely on his fingers and toes for counting, even remedial economics would be too difficult to understand.
Wow…nice stereotype. Do we really sound like we don’t have jobs and never finished high school? Really? Because the only intelligent conversation comes from us. It is you who sounds like you don’t have a job and are minus a brain. I had a very good job for many years. Now retired. And I have some college. Where do you get your strange ideas? Never mind. I have had enough.
Folks, there comes a time when a troll has outlived even the humor value of playing with his name. This one contributes nothing to this blog and demeans us with each post. Why do we still respond? I am guilty of that also. But NO MORE. I will be ignoring this troll from now on. I am hoping the rest of you will follow suit.
It’s like the old Soviet joh, We will pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.
that should have been “joke”
Ilovemycountry:
Everyone here has given you some great answers.
Mine is simple.Everyone is looking out for themselves, individuals and countries, and they should.
happyscrapper said:
The only thing right_on missed in his otherwise excellent observations on Liberals @ Large is: ( when they’re getting their azz kicked in an argument, Time to roll out the insults! )
Another Lib that’s begun working on my last good nerve is former Schumer under the desk ‘aid’ Chris Hahn. You’d think after the public humiliation AW ‘took’ he’d back off the knee-jerk Prog talking points?
I prefer the Greek joke, “The people pretend to ‘pay’ taxes ( and the government pretends to ‘collect’ them! )”
Yeah, I was just thinking….
Even if you could control the minds of everyone, so as to guard against the breakdown of incentives that result under a communist model, such a central planning model would still fail because anytime the central planning committee was incorrect in their assessment and strategies, the entire system would move in the wrong way.
The great thing about a capitalist economy is that some people are moving in the most efficient and correct way, even when others aren’t. So, when you have companies that make bad decisions and go bankrupt, you have other companies that succeed greatly. Examples of two are the technology companies Apple versus Nortel. In a centrally planned economy, even if you were able to control everyone’s mindset toward incentives, you would still encounter periods where all your companies produced like Apple and periods where all your companies produced like Nortel. Not to mention the fact that innovation, without having millions of minds each focusing on different things, would be destroyed for good.
I’m not surprised that you’re confused. The folks who don’t even have jobs are the typical Democrat voter. You know, the one’s on welfare, disability and government grants. I didn’t read any post here from anyone who claimed to have correct answers to a vast and complex economic system. We’re just pointing out the obvious…Obama and his team of socialist idiots don’t have a clue.
We call em as we see em…
We can’t help you understand…you’re an idiot!
Cleaning the Augean stables was a less Herculean task.
#92 On June 8th, 2011 at 12:27 pm, Ilovemycountry said:
There you go again, you think you are still over on the Daily Kos or Huffpo. We are the people that actually went to college and graduated. We pay our taxes and balance our checkbooks. We still pay our mortgages even if they are upside down. Some served in the military and all get a tear in their eye when veterans march by carrying the Stars and Strips. We don’t live in Mom’s basement. We think we are as “good as” but not “better than” anyone. We recognize “stupid” and we don’t like it. We recognize “incompetence” and we don’t like it. We recognize “character” and we expect it.
You definitely need help, but your buffoonery is even beyond the PHDs who post here to give it to you.
I’ll give credit where it’s due, you make so much more sense when your mind isn’t on women.
My farther and mother don’t have post-secondary educations. They are smarter, more talented, more innovative and harder working than I or my three sisters are.
If a post-secondary education, especially from a ‘top’ institution meant anything, you wouldn’t have the resignations of Goolsbee, Summers and Romer; the resignations that this article is based upon, would you Ilovemycountry.
Aren’t you embarrassed to post some of your responses or are you purposely behaving in an ignorant manner?
Yes. I am trying to change my ways.
“churning” is the right word. The Democrats (read Marxists) are the quintessential ponzi and check kiting artists. All America and the rest of the world are wise to it and are beginning, finally, to see the need to criminally prosecute the malfeasents. If we do not jail these characters then we will see them attempt these scams again and again.
So glad to hear that, bravo.
Including getting a poser elected pResident.
Fraud, thy name is Democrat.
I remember Goolsbee from the campaign. Obama was talking tough about our borders or something that would effect the Canadians. Meanwhile, it was made known publicly that Goolsbee was telling the Canadians: Don’t worry about what the candidate says, he really doesn’t mean it.
Sorry for OT, but:
Rollins has to be dropped from Bachman’s campaign if she is to have any chance to win. In a Politico interview, he just said this:
“In an interview with POLITICO, Rollins said the Bachmann campaign will be “so much more substantive.”
“People are going to say, ‘I gotta make a choice and go with the intelligent woman who’s every bit as attractive,’” Rollins said.
So, in other words, Rollins is using the left’s strategy of calling Palin stupid and without substance.
Is Rollins really a conservative or is he just a RINO statist?
Now go away, or I’ll taunt you a second time!
Ok, I’ll play. My neighbor is a retired econimist. He went to NYU around the same time as Greenspan. He is very much a proponent of limited government spending and believes Keynesian economics is the biggest scam ever pulled on the world. Much like Marxism, it can never be disproven because its sycophants can claim the “it didn’t go far enough” excuse.
He is staunchly opposed to raising the debt ceiling until spending is brought under control. The Dems could take the initiative and help get this done, but instead they choose to demagogue every GOP proposal while never proposing a solution of their own.
Also, of course the Chinese want the ceiling raised, because if we default, they suffer.
With apologies to Rogue, my initial post read:
Hey Ma, does this look like a rash?
Alex Trebek: “For $200, He is a self-promoting blowhard and jerk.”
Contestant: “That would be Ed Rollins, Alex.”
Considering this, Rollins really would be more comfortable in Dem circles:
John Wayne “Life is tough, it’s even tougher when you’re stupid” Get it Libs!!!!
If she doesn’t fire him immediately, it will kill her campaign before it ever get off the ground. Conservatives will not stand for the candidates trying to destroy each other…especially on intellect or looks! Argue on the policies, but leave the nasty tactics to the libs!
ILMC,
If you go to any college or University School of Business they will tell you up front that economics is more a philosophy than a discipline.
It is as subjective as judging figure skating.
George Orwell said that some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. Expanding on that would be that some ideas are so stupid, only the truly evil or insane would try to implement them.
When these clowns fail, they scurry back to the protection of academia. When products are bad, they disappear from the market; when ideas are bad, they get recycled by the next group of academic idiots. Looks like academics enjoy wallowing in evil and insanity.
GM CEO: Hey’s who’s up for a one-dollar hike in federal gas tax?
They don’t call it Government Motors for nothing, you know:
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/08/gm-ceo-heys-whos-up-for-a-one-dollar-hike-in-federal-gas-tax/
The beatings will continue until sales improve.
I know it has already been asked but, is Paul Krugman available?
Please father, may I have another dirt sandwich and a hot cup of poo?
And the biggest increase in employment for any President from when he took office until he left – Ronald Reagan. (I’d have to look it up but I think the figures I saw covered from around FDR or Truman.)
Nicely done. I’d like to see how free they are with their “ideas” if they wererequired to pony up their own assets as collateral.
I was once told by an economist at the University of Maryland back in the ’70s that in the halcyon days of the 50s and 60s, economists thought that they had codified the Diamond Sutra of economic theory. They could explain everything, they could control everything, all by the power of the Fed and the Treasury. Johnson’s and Brother Jimma’s stagflation gave them pause, and now the New Democrat-initiated Depression has delivered a coup de gras to the economy – presided over by the vaunted Fed and Treasury. Oh the irony.
And who was it who said that the responsibilities and gravity of elective office would temper the potential excesses of power-obsessed Leftists? Boy were they wrong.
I’m sorry. But your response must in the form of a question.
Obama’s egghead economic
saboteursflash mob.It’s the Chicago way.
Other than slow reflexes, why I could never play Jeopardy
However, thanks to the ACLU, Unions, the Trial Lawyer Assoc, and leftist tax revenue redistribution plans, the libs have made life much easier for stupid people than it should be.
“Who’s the currently most hated straw-man among the Palin-worshipers?” Would be the correct question.
Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound.
And, he’s available.
Based on the state of the global economy, I’d say that’s an accurate statement. If they do know what they’re doing… it means they’re screwing up the global economy on purpose.
I didn’t have a job.
So I created one
Oh yes, strawman indeed.
The latest from Rollins:
Exactly, and this is why bailouts of anyone, corporations to homeowners, never work. If there is no risk involved in decision making then why go all in on every role of the dice?
There are people that manage the global economy? Wow. Didn’t know that. Thanks for the heads up.
Apparently you are correct, they don’t know what they are doing because the global economy is a mess right now and seems to be getting worse.
You betcha! I’d be happy taking a whole lot more in the way of financial risk if I knew I’d get bailed out every time I lost bigtime.
OT:
Eleventh Circuit Skeptical of Obamacare? (Update: Listen Now!)
Update (II): Ilya Shapiro shares his thoughts on the argument, here.
One should only be cautiously optimistic here. We have two Democratic appointees (although one was originally appointed to the District Court by Reagan) and one Republican, and reading the tea leaves in oral argument is tough. But this is still pretty encouraging:
Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal faced off against former Bush administration Solicitor General Paul Clement in what has become the largest and broadest challenge to the healthcare law. In all, 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business joined in urging the judges to strike down the law.
And in an ominous sign for the administration, the judges opened the arguments by saying they knew of no case in American history where the courts had upheld the government’s power to force someone to buy a product.
That argument is at the heart of the constitutional challenge to the healthcare law and its mandate that nearly all Americans have health insurance by 2014.
“I can’t find any case like this,” said Chief Judge Joel Dubina of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. “If we uphold this, are there any limits” on the power of the federal government? he asked.
Judge Stanley Marcus appeared to agree. “I can’t find any case” in the past where the courts upheld “telling a private person they are compelled to purchase a product in the open market…. Is there anything that suggests Congress can do this?”
So that is two skeptics, maybe. And then there is the third judge:
Judge Frank Hull, the third member of the panel, repeatedly asked the lawyers about the possible effect of the court striking down the mandate, while upholding the rest of the law. She said the government had exaggerated the importance of the mandate. It will affect about 10 million persons at most, not the roughly 50 million who are uninsured now. She said the other parts of the law will extend insurance to tens of millions of persons.
So Hull seems to think the question is about whether the mandate is severable, not whether it can be upheld. (For a discussion on the doctrine of severability, go here as a starting point.) Interesting…
Now I should caution you that every lawyer has had the experience of leaving the court with signals that positive and still lost. But this oral argument seems to have gone well.
Also I read somewhere they are going to air it tonight on Tv. I will try to find video if and when that happens. It should be interesting.
[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
http://patterico.com/2011/06/08/eleventh-circuit-skeptical-of-obamacare/
This is as designed. Marxist’s #1 enemy is the US Middle class. So they must attack it as much as they can.
High unemployment? Higher than expected unemployment? As they say in Microsoft: That’s not a bug, that’s a feature!
!
A corresponding feature will be the looming total economic collapse which will mean the financial ruin of millions more to turn to the government in dependency.
You do recall that they are writing this pablum for the students in public govmint schools that then send those same govmint educated students to those very same ivy league institutions? I think it is called a tautology. Those students already know what to expect so there is no reason for them to challenge its content.
You know how everybody here has been wondering which country ilmc actually loves? We finally have our answer.
Heaven help the intelligent student that does challenge content. Most university instructors don’t take challenges to course content well.
Mission accomplished!
On June 8th, 2011 at 5:14 pm, Green eyed Lady said:
Very apparent that Judge Hull is decidedly in favor of Obamacare. Suggesting that the individual mandate would only affect at most 50 million people is bogus and typical of Obama supporters. Within a few short years everyone but Congress and their staff will be covered by the mandate.
A corresponding feature will be the looming total economic collapse which will mean the financial ruin of millions more to turn to the government in dependency.
And that means more democrat voters.
They like more slaves.
Actually only some staff members were exempted from Obamacare (I’ll bet the others were miffed when they found this out).
WRT Obamacare, the gov’t is trying to hide behind the “commerce clause”, but they better be careful. The court may well decide (for a change) to stand by the Constitution, and recognize that the commerce clause was intended to prevent economic warfare between the States, and actually has no power over individual citizens.
If the commerce clause is so powerful, why did we need a 13th amendment? Certainly the commerce clause, as interpreted today, would give the government authority to pass laws prohibiting the trafficking of human beings, without requiring an amendment to the Constitution.
This means “regulate” in the old-fashioned meaning of the word: make regular. Not in the newfangled meaning of the word: control absolutely.
Note it doesn’t say “regulate within the United States”, but “among the several States”. Only power-hungry, activist judges could interpret this to mean that the federal government had the authority to control every financial transaction taking place within the jurisdiction of the United States.
Anyone familiar with the thinking of the Founding Fathers would likewise recognize that the absolute power derived from modern interpretation of the “commerce clause” would be anathema to them.
To regulate has always meant “the rule by law” and “to be regular” has always meant “conforming to rules”.
The founding fathers realized that the states were prone to strangle trade by pinching off transportation routes with toll bridges, toll roads, taxes, duties and other provincial and inefficient barriers to interstate commerce while creating barriers to out-of-state competition.
They also took the power of negotiating with foreign nations out of the hands of the states for the same reasons. The goal was to unite the states by leveling the playing field and eliminating the conflicts that arise when states act like separate sovereign powers. It was one of the very few powers the states surrendered to the federal government when the Constitution was adopted to replace the Articles of Confederation where each state was a separate sovereign “nation”. It didn’t work.
There are no “absolute” powers assigned to any of our governments. The only absolute in the Constitution is that our personal freedoms were granted to us by God and that the government exists at our pleasure. We can change it, replace it or eliminate it as we choose.
Awkwardly worded but I meant that the Articles of Confederation didn’t work.
In my junior year in college, I took an introductory economics class. What I remember most about it was not the professor, who was okay as far as teaching went, but the textbook for the course, which was absolutely horrible. It was badly written, and I remember reading some chapters a couple of times because the concepts were presented in such hopelessly convoluted sentences. I also remember laughing to myself and not quite believing what I was reading when I encountered the authors’ theories of the causes of the ebb and flow of economic activity. There were a few that were so ridiculous that I began to suspect that economics as a theory was much closer to believing in astrology than a serious academic philosophy.
So the world’s economies run on the labor of PhDs and mathematicians?
Wow, I didn’t even know those guys had unions!
I was trying to be somewhat diplomatic.
You were. It was a good analogy.
PatriotGal, what I enjoy is every month when the results of the economists forecasts are released the results are ALWAYS “unexpected.”
LOL, Flyoverman. Yes, those “unexpected” results are a hoot. Makes you think that a lot of their theories should be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Look at the unemployment data from the last 20 years
(start here and adjust time period to look at 1991-2011).
Give “credit” to the party which controlled 2 or more of the following three:
1) Presidency
2) House
3) Senate
You will find that when:
Republicans controlled 2 or 3, the average unemployment rate was 5.0.
And when:
Democrats controlled 2 or 3, the average unemployment rate was 7.3.
It is an amazing process.
The higher Democrat numbers are our fault. If we gave them more power they could lower unemployment dramtically.
With enough power they could finally be able to use the same methods Stalin used to lower the unemployment rate of the Kulaks. Socialism always ends there historically.
could be true – kobe steaks and courvoisier can make one feel sleepy.
They are deep into the “Great Idea” school of management, as in: “Hey, that’s a great idea–let’s do it!” without regard to how things connect and affect.
Trying to fit a round socialist, marxist, tyrannical peg into a square free market hole is hard work, especially since not once in recorded human history has it ever happened.
But hey, through trial and error while subjecting tens of millions to pure misery and despair, you might be the first to get it done.
“Life is tough; it’s tougher when you’re stupid.”
The rest of working America has lamented “YOU OWN THIS TRAIN WRECK SOCK PUPPET, YOU and YOUR ILK are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the ECONOMY-STUPID”
Holy crap Batman–Drudge headline—Jobless claims rise–wait-Unexpectedtly. It is this same bunch of idiots who project the economy 10 years out. Can’t even get it right month to month.
Economics is at a very low stage of development, and much economic dogma is naive and wrong. It seems to me economists are only taken seriously as a means of avoiding responsibility by the president and Congress. If they are at a loss, pass the buck to the economists.
Great article Michelle. Our country is on life support from these utopian idiots.
If this weren’t so easy to predict…
So many people suffering world wide and these smug bastards double down as we slide backward into double dip territory.
This is the second longest economic down turn in our history (so far) and liberals at the helm both times.
On June 9th, 2011 at 8:57 am, NC BLUE said:
Exactly.
And a few people always manage to reap a fortune, then and now, off these downturns. Getting even richer from other people’s misery.
If you follow MM’s link, pay close attention to one section in particular:
Why not just pick 3 million people in a lottery and give them $266,000? Then they woudn’t need a job!
Those people would have to be SEIU, AFT or PEU members for the admin to consider that idea.
Some say economics is a science. What happens when a scientist begins with prejudice then ignores the results of the experiment? It’s called an art.
And so many are convinced in the results of thier “art” that they should be called con artists.
And since they refuse to stick to scientific laws and results, they lose the right to be called a scientist.
+3!