This post originally appeared on The Baseline Scenario.
The president should nominate Paul Krugman to replace Peter Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). (Orszag resignation details are here.)
We have previously reviewed Krugman's outstanding qualifications for this (or any other top level) job (link to details). The main reason Krugman himself has been reluctant in the past relates to a potentially difficult Senate confirmation hearing -- for example, if Krugman had been put forward to replace Ben Bernanke.
But for the OMB position, the dynamic of a hearing would be terrific for the president's specific agenda and broader messages. Krugman, of course, is the leading advocate for continued (or increased) fiscal stimulus. This is exactly President Obama's message to the G20 this weekend.
Plus, when Republicans push back against Krugman on this issue, he will let them have it full blast on fiscal policy during the Bush administration. Krugman has, again and again, been an outspoken critic of the Bush era fiscal policy. He has precise chapter and verse on where the Bush team went off the deep fiscal edge.
Krugman also stands for responsible medium-term fiscal policy -- he wrote the original definitive work, after all, on balance of payments crises. But the point is not to engage in precipitate and panicky fiscal austerity (as announced in the UK today), but rather to put the overall debt onto a sustainable path. It is very hard to do that when the people claiming the represent "fiscal prudence" are actually the ones who created this massive mess in the first place. Krugman can set the public record straight on this -- it would be great television and very good economics.
This is exactly what the debate on our current deficit and future debt path needs. The Obama administration lost the narrative on this point also (as well as on banking and much more). Paul Krugman can get them back on track.
The reason for my selection is that the Council has already supplied 350 of their 3000 membership roster to the Prez for appointments across his Administration including his entire economic team of Volcker, Geithner, Summers and the head of that PRIVATE CENTRAL BANK called the Federal Reserve.
So, let's keep this appointment in the CFR family (or as I call them; the Shadow Government of the United States of Corporate America).
it seems as if the Neocons are still pretty much in control of the country.
johnson must be high
"Centrist" is the outlook that "everything is fine."
This spending binge, in the midst of recession, brought huge deficits.
Hoover then tried to address the deficit with a huge tax hike. In 1932, the top income tax rate in the US rose from 25% to 63%. He also tried to implement a national sales tax, but this was defeated. This followed the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which put a 60% tariff on more than 3,200 products.
After 1933, the Roosevelt administration pursued much the same approach. By 1935, Federal expenditures had grown to $6.4 billion, and in 1940 they hit $9.5 billion - over three times the level in 1929.
That year, the top personal income tax rate was 79%. President Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, described the results in May 1939:
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. ...We have never made good on our promises... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started... And an enormous debt to boot."
We need to elect someone else as the Democratic nominee in 2102.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/22/peter-orszag-resigns-a-lo_n_621274.html