http://bit.ly/xT88l Another NYT white-washing puff piece...
- - - WASHINGTON - President Obama was getting his daily economic briefing one recent morning when a fly distracted him. The president swatted and missed, just as the pest buzzed near the shoes of Lawrence H. Summers, the chief White House economic adviser. "Couldn't you aim a little higher?" deadpanned Christina D. Romer, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Mrs. Romer was joking, she said in an interview, adding, "There are only a few times that I felt like smacking Larry." Yet few laughed in the president's presence. ... By all accounts, much of the tension derives from the president's choice of the brilliant but sometimes supercilious Mr. Summers to be the director of the National Economic Council, making him the policy impresario of the team. The widespread assumption, from Washington to Wall Street, was that the job would be Mr. Summers's way station until the president could name him chairman of the Federal Reserve when Ben S. Bernanke's term expires early next year. ... When Mr. Obama named his economic team last November, even some within his circle questioned whether Mr. Summers, given his prickly personality, could be an honest broker of other advisers' ideas, as National Economic Council directors are supposed to be. Mr. Summers also had made it clear that he wanted to be Treasury secretary again, as he was in the Clinton administration. As messy as the process has sometimes been, officials say Mr. Summers and his colleagues have worked through their differences. Often arriving and leaving in the dark, sustained by coffee and the Diet Cokes that fill Mr. Summers's office refrigerator, they have produced in six months an array of economic rescue plans that would be daunting if spread over six years. With those, and the Fed's efforts, the economy shows signs of new life. ... The disagreements are only natural, White House officials say. The issues are big, and so are the personalities, as Mr. Obama intended. He has said he wanted advisers who would be teammates as well as rivals, long on experience and brainpower and able to air all sides of an issue to help him decide. "You can't assemble a group of really brilliant people, and deal with some of the most complex problems in our lifetimes and not have disagreements," said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama's senior political strategist who, with the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, plays a big role in mediating among the economic advisers and helps shape the decisions. The president "invites debate but he doesn't tolerate factionalism. And ultimately everybody on the economic team knows that at the end of the day we're going to hold hands and jump together," Mr. Axelrod added. ... Some advisers complained that, under Mr. Summers, meetings became "endless debating sessions," a phrase used separately by two aides who asked not to be named given the delicacy of internal matters. As Mr. Summers sees it, his penchant for debate - he was a standout member of the debate team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - fits the job. ... In the interview, Mr. Summers denied that he favored nationalizing banks but acknowledged that he explored the idea so that the president had all options. At the time, the Treasury and the Fed were conducting "stress tests" of the big banks' books, and it was not clear that some banks would be judged viable. "Nationalization is a term that has become meaningless because people use it in different ways," he said. "I certainly favored identifying every possibility and presenting every option to the president in response to possible contingencies." ... "Larry will come to any issue and say, well, here's all the 16 reasons why there's problems with that proposal. If he's got ideas, particularly if I think they won't work, I say to him, 'Well, why don't you make the case against it, Larry, because you're pretty good at making the case against anything.' " ... He did so again when Mrs. Romer outlined her final draft at a recent well-attended meeting. She cut him off, saying that some of his own staff agreed the point did not belong in the paper. "I'm not going to put schlocky arguments in there," she said. "I'm not making a schlocky argument," he replied. Mrs. Romer said later that the exchange was "good-natured," no different than "a typical seminar where I come from" in academia. The point Mr. Summers sought was not in her paper on Tuesday. - - - In other words: A bunch of childish, narcissistic master-(de)baters are running the economy like they're used to running academic coffee klatches. He's surrounded himself with egg-headed egomaniacs and self-professed "brilliant" thinkers. Like himself. This doesn't end well. And the following line: << Often arriving and leaving in the dark, sustained by coffee and the Diet Cokes that fill Mr. Summers's office refrigerator, they have produced in six months an array of economic rescue plans that would be daunting if spread over six years. With those, and the Fed's efforts, the economy shows signs of new life.>> Well, that's just plain journalistic malfeasance. Naturally, not a single fact is cited---it's more like an editorial comment that just slips in there as an unsubstantiated fact, to allay the fears of the NYTs readers. Which signs of new life are they talking about? The fact that unemployment WITH the Porkulus (9.4%) exceeds their worst-case estimate of unemployment without the Porkulus (8.8%)? Or maybe it's what's happening in the bond market, where investors are calling "Bullshit!" on the Fed's monetary policy and pushing mortgage rates higher? Or maybe it's the fact that despite the bailouts both GM and Chrysler are in bankruptcy (weren't they too big to fail?)? The fact that their projected annual deficit for next year is even bigger than they first prognosticated, nearer $1.9 trillion than $1.4 trillion, and 4-5 times bigger than any deficit Bush ever permitted? The fact that IRS revenue is down 34% from last year? The writer of this article could have mentioned these relevant facts, in assessing how all this tension in the economic team is panning out, but I guess they were too inconvenient to support the BS she wanted to pass off as reality. Which is why the NYT is in the tank, and not just for Obama. - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
