Romer has written a paper on tax policy that claims that tax increases (except for deficit reduction) are terrible for the economy - hard to reconcile with the strong economic records of many higher-tax European countries. Geithner has worked with Paulson to craft the ongoing bailout. So far the economic team is to the right of Clinton's. I am worried.

Thanks, Steve. I didn't know that. Hmmmm...

Question: Do you think we're seeing a case of Obama bringing in a team that will reassure folks - precisely so that he can push policy in the other direction?

Sort of akin to the idea of keeping Bob Gates at the Pentagon, so that the military doesn't freak out about pulling out of Iraq.

Bill -- Can you provide a source for that? I'm not seeing it in his prepared remarks today.

Kari - No, I don't. Nobody knows who the head of the Council of Economic Advisers is anyway; he could have picked whoever he wanted. He could have tried to bring Laura Tyson, head of CEA under Clinton, who was clearly more progressive than Romer. Thus far, this is definitely a less progressive economic team, relative to the 'center,' than Clinton had -- although everyone who is anyone seems to agree on an 'investment' strategy right now, so we might see real investments in infrastructure etc. - which Clinton wanted, but did not get. The 'center' has moved left in that respect. As to Ted Kennedy staffers, I know nothing about Barnes, but I do know that Kennedy shares responsibility for No Child Left Behind, so his staff work can't always be that good.

Kari - No, I don't. Nobody knows who the head of the Council of Economic Advisers is anyway; he could have picked whoever he wanted. He could have tried to bring Laura Tyson, head of CEA under Clinton, who was clearly more progressive than Romer. Thus far, this is definitely a less progressive economic team, relative to the 'center,' than Clinton had -- although everyone who is anyone seems to agree on an 'investment' strategy right now, so we might see real investments in infrastructure etc. - which Clinton wanted, but did not get. The 'center' has moved left in that respect. As to Ted Kennedy staffers, I know nothing about Barnes, but I do know that Kennedy shares responsibility for No Child Left Behind, so his staff work can't always be that good.

Kari, Steve - Most of the critiques I've been reading on the left actually focus on how Clintonesque this team is, in the sense that they're mostly Rubin proteges.

The NYTimes had a good piece this morning, Rubinomics Recalculated - which includes some amusing quips by Jared Bernstein (the kind of progressive economist one might have hoped would play a role in the new Administration.)

A couple of thoughts:

NPR was just this AM discussing Geithner. While he has been working with Paulson--its apparent that at least some of what Paulson has been leading on was not something that Geithner agreed with, but was tasked with implementation, so he did it. That's a "for what its worth" comment, I suppose.

My understanding of Barnes is that she's a real progressive. Some info: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/24/125821/08/298/665847

An excerpt:

Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Council served as chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on the Judiciary Committee from 1985 to 1993. Want to get an idea of how progressive she is? Read this: In January of 2007, prior to President Bush's state of the union address, Barnes wrote this essay for the Washington Post, What a Progressive President Might Say:

Here at home there is urgent work to do to fight the historically high -- and growing -- gap between our richest and poorest citizens. While the mean income of households on the low end of the income spectrum -- the bottom 20 percent -- is just $10,655 a year, the income of the top twenty percent of households averages almost $160,000. That's 15 times as much. At the same time, according to the latest census figures, the middle class, beset with stagnant wages and mountainous debts, is shrinking. The sad fact is that one of our most cherished values as a society, namely equality of opportunity, is fading as a reality for far too many people...

Yeah, Carla, I read that too, but what does she say we should do about it? She says raise the minimum wage and more education. Nothing about unions or changes in tax policy. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with her, but so far there's nobody in this Administration who's identifiably as much of a progressive as, say, Robert Reich was as part of Clinton's team. Or Joseph Stiglitz, Clinton's second head of CEA. Also remember, Jason Furman, a big defender of Wal-Mart, was Obama's chief adviser on the campaign. We are going to need progressives in Congress to push this Administration.

The highest level of concern has focused on Summers. See this piece by Dean Baker, or, from another perspective, Peter Cervantes-Gautschi's piece on the international effects of the Clinton team's Mexico bailout.

Yeah, Carla, I read that too, but what does she say we should do about it? She says raise the minimum wage and more education. Nothing about unions or changes in tax policy. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with her, but so far there's nobody in this Administration who's identifiably as much of a progressive as, say, Robert Reich was as part of Clinton's team.

Steve: I'm not sure you're entirely correct about that. Chris Bowers at OpenLeft has a post up now that highlights three progressive choices by Obama, one of which is Barnes:

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=10127

Excerpt:

Fortunately, there are at least three examples of progressive appointments on Obama's senior White House staff:

1. Patrick Gaspard, White House Political Director: One clear example is Patrick Gaspard, who formerly worked for SEIU 1199. All indications I have seen are that Gaspard is a principled progressive in the movement mold.

2. Phil Schiliro, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. Phil Schiliro, formerly Waxman's Chief of Staff in the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, will serve as the top liason between the White House and Congress. All indications are that Schiliro will advise Obama from the left.

3. Melody Barnes, Director of Domestic Policy Council: Melody Barnes will head the Domestic Policy council, which coordinates policy-making between a number of federal departments. Barnes worked for Ted Kennedy for a long time, and also for the Center for American Progress.

I'm not an expert on any of these people, but I generally trust Bowers to have a good handle on cred, at least for my cursory judgment purposes. I'll continue to personally look at them more in-depth as opportunities present themselves. But I hesitate to broaden the notion that Obama isn't putting any progressives into key positions. I'm not sure that's the case.

On the question of how the policy will be different even if some of the faces are not, here's a pithy statement from Bob Borosage:

It's not the personnel, it's the policy. And on this, Obama has been clear. He's announced a massive recovery plan based on putting people to work with public investment in areas vital to our future. The crisis we face makes Rubinomics irrelevant. Deficit spending must go up, finance must be re-regulated, trade imbalances must be reduced and manufacturing can no longer be scorned. Obama is choosing experienced hands for the crisis, trusting that their experience does not impede the new thinking needed to get us out of this hole. He'll set the direction. And so far, he’s on course.

The truly alarming news this morning, though, has come in the articles describing the scale of the Federal Reserve's role in the bailout, which is dwarfing TARP and has even less transparency/accountability.

The political director and legislative affairs jobs are implementation jobs, not policy-making jobs. Bowers himself says: "While it is a decent progressive start to filling out the White House senior staff, one question that remains to be seen is if these senior staff appointments really are the equivalent, in terms of power, to the cabinet appointments that so far have unanimously gone to centrists. I have heard from sources that I trust that this absolutely is the case, but the lack of progressivism within the cabinet leaves me feeling wary." Incidentally, by the way, I personally feel more favorably toward Rahm Emanuel than some people - he joined Wyden in calling for equalizing capital gains and regular income taxes.

Here's a link to Emanuel and Wyden's statement on tax reform.

http://wyden.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=266384

Emanuel was also a cosponsor of Blumenauer's "Rebuilding America" bill.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-5976&tab=summary

hard to reconcile with the strong economic records of many higher-tax European countries

In my personal odyssey from a young, Limbaugh-listening, knee-jerk conservative to wherever I'm currently wandering left-of-center, my views on fiscal and social ideology have followed very different tracks. The one thing that really put me over the hump on fiscal policy was researching an old post at my blog on those very higher-tax European countries compared to our own. To this day I continue to be deeply intrigued by the subject, particularly with respect to the Northern European countries.

Perhaps it's very naive of me to think this, but I can't help thinking that our own tax policy could be made fundamentally more progressive if the right person or persons could make the case in a very public way using the Northern European model.

The only thing that really gives me pause is the nagging thought that their success is as much or more about culteral as it is about fiscal policy. Else why the really big difference between them and the Southern European experiments with fiscal socialism?

Harry, Steve, et. al:

You raise some important issues to think about. And as Sirota says, we have no way of knowing yet, it's way too early. One question though: how you would rate the actual policy initiatives being announced? Not the rumors or the leaks by who knows who, but the actual stuff like the 2.5 million person jobs program?

Further, the "implementation" positions that Steve cites, if you look at the Clinton WH, were also very important in terms of policy.

The political director decides which candidates get help raising money, and which politicians get ignored. The congressional liason does a great of the policy deal-making with members of congress. The public liason office makes decisions about which interest groups and activists get to have meetings with the President, Veep, and other officials, and informs the rest of the WH operation which groups are being most helpful and harmful, which have real strength, etc., all of which can have a huge policy influence. If the First Lady's office gets seriously involved in an issue, it can make a huge difference.

Think about the last 8 years. How much of the policy from the Bush Admin didn't come from Rove, Bush or Cheney?

Take medicare, for example. The thing was crooked 8 different ways, but not because of Tommy Thompson. It was because Rove wanted to pay back donors. Energy was a disaster because of Cheney and his personal design/meetings. Even the nutballs at the Pentagon were carrying out the wishes of Cheney.

I'm not saying that the appointments are meaningless. But we should be a bit more circumspect about them than what's being articulated. Its far too early to make judgments about what kind of policies Obama is going to push.

Obama isn't a movement progressive and he never promised that he was. He's interested in at least some policy outcomes that are substantially progressive, but he's not at all interested in building a partisan movement.

He's said that again and again. I think we should take him at his word.

Here's a selection from today's Times article on the topic. I respect both Jared Bernstein and Robert Kuttner, I agree with Bernstein that so far, the articulated policy direction seems OK. I agree with Kuttner that the personnel are worrisome. Carla's right: it doesn't really matter who's in charge if they're doing the right things. But the fact that there is, so far, nobody outside the centrist club in the inner economic circle is discomfiting.

“Everyone recognizes that we’re looking at deficits of considerable magnitude,” Jared Bernstein, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, told The Times. “Whether it’s Bob Rubin, Larry Summers or the most conservative economist, that is a widely shared recognition.”

Liberals like Mr. Bernstein had long had an aversion to the kind of centrist economic policies of the Clinton years, which they felt were too concerned with deficit reduction and not focused enough on investment programs for labor and the middle class.

But Mr. Bernstein’s past differences with Mr. Rubin have so softened that the two men recently wrote a column together about their new common ground on spending, regulation and trade protections for workers.

As for Mr. Summers, he has “truly evolved,” Mr. Bernstein said, based on his reading of Mr. Summers’s columns in the Financial Times this year. Both men have been advisers to Mr. Obama, and at a recent meeting, Mr. Bernstein recalled: “I told him, ‘Boy, Larry, your views on trade, on income inequality, on stimulus spending, they’re approaching ours at E.P.I.’ And he sort of huffed and puffed, and said, ‘Oh well, changing circumstances.’ ”

Yet Rubin critics remain, mostly in Mr. Obama’s own Democratic Party among liberals and union members who favor even more domestic spending and more protectionist trade policies.

“What worries me is there is not one person in the senior group who is the outsider to this club,” Robert Kuttner, a colleague of Mr. Bernstein’s at the liberal Economic Policy Institute who has written a book, “Obama’s Challenge,” about approaches to the economic crisis, told The Times. “Where is the diversity of opinion in this economic team?” Mr. Kuttner asked.

Yet even Mr. Kuttner has warmed to some he calls Rubinistas. He praises Mr. Geithner for not hailing from a Wall Street investment bank and for being “among the toughest on the need to re-regulate” the financial industry from his perch at the New York Federal Reserve.

Mr. Kuttner calls Mr. Summers brilliant and notes that he has been out front in proposing big stimulus spending. But he disapprovingly noted that in recent meetings of economists advising Congressional Democrats, Mr. Summers has argued against restricting banks’ ability to issue dividends to stockholders as a condition of receiving federal bailout money.

Watching MSNBC, saw Mort Zuckerman from US News. He noted that Tim Geithner was recently quoted - when it was suggested that Wall Street could "self-regulate" its way out of this mess - as saying, "Self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance."

Seems to me that Geithner is looking forward to boosting regulation of Wall Street.

steve writes: Romer has written a paper on tax policy that claims that tax increases (except for deficit reduction) are terrible for the economy - hard to reconcile with the strong economic records of many higher-tax European countries.

Steve, I don't understand what you mean when you say "reconcile with the strong economic records..."

Do you mean raising taxes in a recession (which is the quote from Romer that I believe you are referring to)? And if you are squaring that with European economies that raised taxes in a recession, a lot more specifics are needed.

I believe the relationship between tax rates and economic records is a lot more complex than you make it out to be here.

Before everyone buys the claim that this is a conservative economic team, I urge you to read the papers posted at the Hamilton Project which has been an idea incubator for many of the members of this team.

This is a good read: Why Obamanomics Isn't Rubinomics

Loved this quote by the Romers:

"At the very least, policymakers should be aware that the historical experience suggests that tax cuts tend to lead to tax increases rather than to spending cuts," they wrote, examining the effects of tax cut legislation in 1948, 1964, 1981 and the early 2000s. (emphasis supplied)

Let me fan the paranoia a bit more by admitting I like the Obama economic team.

I especially think Steve Novick was unfair to Christina Romer. Her paper, The Macroeconomic Effect of Tax Changes, does not say that high tax economies are less productive than low tax economies. She (and her co-author husband) simply tracked tax changes in post-war America and concluded, based on the data, that tax increases caused a decline in economic activity except where used to reduce pre-existing deficits.

She says nothing about the consequences of, say, shifting the cost of health care from the private to the public sector, as most European countries do, with a concommitant increase in taxes and reduction in out-of-pocket on-tax expenditures on health care. Her study was based on the actual tax increases we have experienced since World War II.

The problem, I guess, is that Christina Romer is a professional economist whose conclusions are driven by data, not ideology. Apparently this was not the change some Obamaniacs had in mind.

I say give these folks a chance. But then, I never thought the Clinton economic policy was so bad.

Here's what the head of George Bush's Council of Economic Advisers had to say about Romer (and below that, excerpts from Wikipedia on Mankiw): Conservative economist Greg Mankiw, who ran the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bush in 2003, praised Romer's appointment and predicted that she would work well alongside the high-profile and controversial Summers, whose nomination he also applauded.

"They are both mainstream economists, slightly left of center but not radically so. Very level-headed but with a liberal point of view," said Mankiw who was the best man in 1983 when Christine Romer married her husband, David Romer, also a Berkeley professor. Who's Mankiw? Well, from Wikipedia: "His advocacy at the CEA of tax cuts even in the face of large deficits led some other economists, such as Paul Krugman and J. Bradford DeLong, to criticize him as in thrall to Bush administration policies.[citation needed] ... In November 2006, Mankiw became an official economic advisor to then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's political action committee, Commonwealth PAC.[6] In 2007, he signed on as an economic advisor to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.[7] [edit]Controversy

[edit]Benefits of outsourcing Several controversies arose from CEA's February 2004 Economic Report of the President.[8] In a press conference, Mankiw spoke of the gains from free trade, noting that outsourcing of jobs by U.S. companies is "probably a plus for the economy in the long run."[9][10]

More folks are weighing in. William Greider is definitely not a happy camper.

For some historical perspective, the other week Frances Fox Piven drew come helpful comparisons with the role mass movements played during Roosevelt's first term:

FDR became a great president because the mass protests among the unemployed, the aged, farmers and workers forced him to make choices he would otherwise have avoided. He did not set out to initiate big new policies.

Jack's right and wrong about Romer, She did not say we're better than Europe, but the paper did not (unless I miss something) qualify its "taxes are bad for the economy" statement by saying that this study was (as Jack suggests) fairly narrow, which she could easily have done. She does not say "this study should not be interpreted to mean that tax increases for specified purposes like health care would have a negative economic affect." Conservatives will use her paper to say "taxes are bad," and she gave them plenty of material. By the way, as long as I'm grousing, I"m not thrilled with Obama's statement that "We'll have to scour our federal budget, line by line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices." What does "line by line" mean? The Federal budget is mostly four things: Social Security, defense, health care and interest on the debt. "Line by line" suggests that it's a matter of sorting through 600 categories and cutting 87 of them, or something.

the main thing, of course, is that this is Obama's team. it's not McCain's, so let's be grateful the country got that part right.

because being this is Obama's team, that means the person in charge is ... Barack Obama. i don't really think we'll see him channel Robert Rubin or anyone else. what he's doing, in the midst of a crisis we somehow have to survive for another 2 months before he takes office, is trying to calm people down and stop the bleeding. note the recovery (whatever the hell that means) on Wall St in the last two days.

i think his primary goal right now is to get things on solid ground. no, that's not change in and of itself. but we can't move on to the bigger items if the economy is going down the shitter. i don't expect either for him to become a DLC president or to keep this team in place any longer than is necessary. once this crisis is past, i think we'll see more changey types step forward.

and i believe that whatever may be necessary to undo the long years of damage -- and it's more than 8; it goes back to Reagan if not further -- the current situation will be seen by Obama as only short-term. he won't lose track of what the real purpose of his presidency is: universal health care, environmental stewardship, jobs for all, education, etc. we saw in the campaign he rarely made the "progressives" happy with what he said & did, and yet he whipped McCain, delivered a good Congress and had coattails that went down into most states. personally, i'm not ready to declare him a failure yet.

Here's Andrew Ross Sorkin on Geithner:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/business/25sorkin.html?ref=business

She does not say "this study should not be interpreted to mean that tax increases for specified purposes like health care would have a negative economic affect."

The reason she didn't say that is that this was an academic paper, not a political column. She is an economist's economist--the kind David Krugman used to be before he discovered there was more money in being a pundit.

I have to admit, the more I read of her work, the better I like her. Which probably means, the less most of you BlueOregoners should like her.

Did you mean Paul Krugman the economist who was recently awarded a Nobel Prize for Economics?

Yes, the Paul Krugman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his early work on trade theory BEFORE he became a New York Times columnist.

As a general rule I think it's prudent to be deeply skeptical of individuals who express outrage on behalf of others. Doubly so when that same individuals has heaped scorn on those same others who he know presumes to express outrage on behalf of.

Carla, why can't you give your guy a chance? Obama was elected to lead. He deserves to have the team he thinks will help him do that. Although keeping Gates on the job has been talked about for weeks, the fact that it has just now been announced suggests that Obama and his people were making sure they could count on Gates to actually carry out Obama's policy.

After all, Secretary of Defense isn't a symbolic position and shouldn't be seen as a reward for being on the right side of an issue. It's about doing a job--and the man who was elected President has decided Gates is the best person to keep doing the job for now.

I know it goes against the principle of government by blogs, but maybe, just maybe, Obama knows a little bit more about the people he is selecting than his supporters out here in Oregon.

I've long suspected that all the complaining we hear about lack of leadership actually reflects a much more serious lack of followership.

all the complaining

Maybe, Jack; but some of us are just born to kvetch.

It's not only funny, it's also an amazingly insightful book. The first chapters are about as fine an historical and "existential" explanation of Judaism as I've seen in such a brief space. Also - Wex himself narratives the Audible version - and believe me, this is a book to be heard more than read.

Carla, why can't you give your guy a chance? Obama was elected to lead. He deserves to have the team he thinks will help him do that. Although keeping Gates on the job has been talked about for weeks, the fact that it has just now been announced suggests that Obama and his people were making sure they could count on Gates to actually carry out Obama's policy.

Jack--if you read up the comment thread here, you see that I am in fact willing to cut Obama a lot of slack on many of these appointments. I've also pushed back on some who've tried to say that there are no progressives in key positions that will effect policy.

In my opinion, Gates is a different matter. He's been in charge of some of the most egregious Bush policies. While I recognize that he will take his policy cues from Obama, it seems like if Obama is really going to push hard for change in this direction--its tough to sell Gates as the guy to do it.

Carla, I don't think Obama is trying to sell Gates as anything. I think he wants the person who is best situated to move quickly on getting troops out of Iraq. Who better than the guy who doesn't need to waste time getting up to speed?

My guess is that we will begin withdrawing from Iraq even faster than Obama originally intended. I don't know who is going to argue that we need to stay there to prevent chaos when we seem to have our hands full trying to prevent chaos in this country.

I think the American public's patience with continuing to spend billions of dollars each week in Iraq, which was never great, is about exhausted. I'm not sure that's wise in the long term, but I think that is the practical reality.

RW - this will either help your identity crisis or further confuse things....

Carla, I don't think Obama is trying to sell Gates as anything. I think he wants the person who is best situated to move quickly on getting troops out of Iraq. Who better than the guy who doesn't need to waste time getting up to speed?

Jack: We're in the midst of transition and Obama doesn't take the reins for a month and a half. Somehow I think there's probably time for a new person to "get up to speed" in that time.

Jack: We're in the midst of transition and Obama doesn't take the reins for a month and a half. Somehow I think there's probably time for a new person to "get up to speed" in that time.

If only it were that simple.

If only it were that simple.

Why isn't it?

While experience has taught me that more often than not it's unwise to disregard/dispute Carla's political reads, and keen observers will have noted that I rarily do it. I have to say that I agree with Jack Roberts viz Sec. Gates and Obama's rationale. It best fits with our friend Occam's shaving impliment, IMHO. Mostly because I'm skeptical that any length of time being the new Secretary In Waiting is comparable to any length of time actually being the Sec. of D.

Mostly because I'm skeptical that any length of time being the new Secretary In Waiting is comparable to any length of time actually being the Sec. of D.

This could be said of Secretary of the Treasury as well--and we're up to our eyeballs in a mess there--with a reasonable argument to be made that its as bad a problem as the DOD on a national and a global scale.

If we can jettison the Bush folks on the economy and have them up to speed by the time Obama is sworn in, I'm having a tough time reckoning why the same can't be done for Defense.

This could be said of Secretary of the Treasury as well.....If we can jettison the Bush folks on the economy and have them up to speed by the time Obama is sworn in, I'm having a tough time reckoning why the same can't be done for Defense.

The new tresury secretary is a total insider as well, and has been involved with virually every discussion with the Bush team lead by Paulson in the past couple of months.

As for Gates..........This goes back to Obama's press conference:

Reporter: With all of these retreads from Clinton and Bush in you administration, where will the change come from?

Obama: From me.

It makes sense that he hires insiders from the Executive and and Congressional branches, and then tells them what he wants the Big Picture to look like.

We won't know if he's actually bringing change until we either see the change or see a head rolling out of a door. If neither happens, we can then assume that it's just going more of the same.

In either case, we'll have to wait until at least five minutes after he's sworn in at the earliest.

If we can jettison the Bush folks on the economy and have them up to speed by the time Obama is sworn in, I'm having a tough time reckoning why the same can't be done for Defense.

It's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, isn't it? The Constitution explicitly names the President as Commander in Chief of the federal military. I'm unaware of a comparable "banker in chief" or "economist in chief" enumeration.

The Secretary of Defense is almost entirely a management position. The Sec manages the military as directed by the Commander in Chief. When it comes to strategic advice the Secretary is only one of many voices, and arguably one of the least among them. The Joint Chiefs and the National Security Advisor (and staff) are much more overtly there to supply strategic advice than the Secretary is. His/Her job is more about implimenting strategy and maintaining the capacity to impliment future strategy.

I just don't see anything really comparable among the Presidents economic team.

Jack said, and the man who was elected President has decided Gates is the best person to keep doing the job for now. For now. If his theory viz withdrawing from Iraq turns out to be accurate then it may be that Obama is only looking to Gates to facilitate that strategy over the short term and may well ask for his resignation once he feels sufficient progress has been made towards that end that Gate's hands-on experience isn't enough of a reason to keep him on as Secretary.

Thanks, Z. We now close the circle all the way back to the second comment in this thread - which I wrote:

Sort of akin to the idea of keeping Bob Gates at the Pentagon, so that the military doesn't freak out about pulling out of Iraq.

Seems to me that Obama has two primary options here - appoint a team that the military brass doesn't know and doesn't trust immediately, or appoint someone they do know and trust. As long as the mission is the same (end the war, bring the troops home), I can understand the argument for the latter. It's likely to get our troops home faster.