So-o-o I was just speaking with a big muck a muck in my state.

[stellanoir]

He's a CEO and is really active in the international community. He has supported both parties.

He said, "Who are Obama's economic advisors? The economy will suffer under Obama and how foreign investors won't invest here" I started to go ballistic over how that has already happened and started referring to how many believe that Obama is being set up for failure due to *'s horrendous actions.

Then he entered a "dead zone." Click.

I know about the stellar Susan Rice and Samantha Power, but I don't know about Obama's economic advisers.

Still I know that the accusation of Dems being "tax and spend' is entirely vacuous given that is what most governments do.

Loot and waste is far worse. We've had zilch accountability under this misadministration.

Pssst. . .the surplus went "Poof" as did droves of dough in Iraq.

Can anyone offer up some stats or the economic characters affiliated with Obama's campaign?

Don't have time to do the research now.

Would appreciate being fully armed when I speak to this guy again.

Thanks in advance.

[blondeatlast]

1. This gets a rec when the poster didn't do her own research? WTF? nt

[stellanoir]

3. Hey I've some other stuff going on right now.

People used to routinely help each other out here in this manner.

Sorry if you found it offensive.

Peace

[blondeatlast]

6. I just found it odd, that's all. You don't?

Backatcha.

[stellanoir]

13. huh ?

No I honestly didn't.

[rucky]

18. DU is a great place to do research!

I never understood the "google it" attitude, and why asking questions is a no-no around here.

[hobbit709]

2. Whenever I hear that Dems being "tax and spend' BS

My response it "At least the Dems know that you have to raise the money before you can spend it"

[yurbud]

4. that guy may be right for the opposite reason--Obama aint different ENOUGH

from Bush.

Naomi Klein does know who his economic advisors are, and it's not good news--the are Milton Friedman devotees:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080630/klein

[stellanoir]

8. thanks for the link

[Captain Hilts]

5. Read Naomi Klein's piece in the Nation about Obama's economic advisers...

and a positive Krugman piece about the same adviser.

[stellanoir]

9. thanks

[Captain Hilts]

11. Klein's is negative and Krugman's positive. nt

[Coexist]

7. heres some stuff:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&refer=politics&sid=a7Zdp3HDltW4

Three academics -- Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times, Jeffrey Liebman, 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist -- form the core of Obama's economic team.

`Top-Notch Economists'

``They're all top-notch economists,'' said Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor and former chief White House economist for President George W. Bush. ``Their views are left of the political center, as one would expect, but only slightly.''

A trio of seasoned Washington hands bolsters the academics: Karen Kornbluh, policy director in Obama's Senate office; Daniel Tarullo, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, and a former senior economic adviser in the Clinton administration; and Michael Froman, the chief of staff for former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who now works with his old boss at Citigroup Inc.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-furman11-2008jun11,0,2347842.story

Furman worked most recently as a budget expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington heading the Hamilton Project, an economic policy research group. It was founded by Rubin, who now chairs the executive committee of Citigroup Inc.

Lori Wallach, a lawyer and leading opponent of free-trade policies, said the appointment was jarring from a policy and a political perspective.

http://time-blog.com/curious_capitalist/2008/06/obamas_other_economic_advisers.html

The addition of Jason Furman to Barack Obama's economic team has gotten some attention. Furman was John Kerry's economics spokesguy in 2004, but more to the point he's about as centrist as centrist Democrats come, thinks Wal-Mart is swell, and is a protege of Bob Rubin. So I figure it's worth mentioning that, during the conference call with reporters that Furman and Obama veteran Austan Goolsbee did Monday, Furman said that one of his jobs would be doing outreach to the likes of "Robert Reich, Jared Bernstein, and Paul Volcker."

Those were, interestingly enough, the only three names he mentioned. Reich is of course the former Clinton Labor Secretary, Paul Krugman bete noire, sometime fabulist, and moderate critic of unfettered capitalism. Bernstein is the meticulous chronicler of declining middle-class living standards at the labor-friendly Economic Policy Institute. And Paul Volcker used to run this thing called the Federal Reserve, where he--depending on your perspective--either killed off the Dread Beast Inflation or threw millions of Americans out of their jobs to make bond investors happy.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/20/magazines/fortune/easton_obama.fortune/?postversion=2008062308

In late March he gave a thoughtful if sometimes vague speech on the need for more financial-markets supervision, which was heavily influenced by advice from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker.

He is frequently on the phone with billionaire CEO Warren Buffett ("one of my favorite people," says Obama, "he's just completely down-to-earth and as smart as they come"), a critic of the financial industry and of tax breaks for the rich who also happens to understand capital markets better than just about anyone.

Obama calls on Apple's Steve Jobs to help him "think about how to be successful and nimble in the current global environment."

Advice also comes from Wall Street veterans like J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly - as well as longtime Chicago friends Penny Pritzker of Hyatt (who runs his campaign finances), Ariel Capital's John Rogers, and investor James S. Crown.

In his first management act as de facto Democratic nominee, Obama signaled that he might inch toward the center. He enraged labor leaders and liberal activists by appointing Jason Furman to run his economic team. Furman directed the Hamilton Project, a Brookings Institution--based initiative sponsored by former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a centrist and pariah among hard-core liberals. Furman has defended free-trade agreements, and at a time when unions were on the warpath against Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), he produced a research paper arguing that the chain's low prices are a boon to low-income consumers.

On the same day that Furman's appointment was announced, Obama told CNBC he might consider deferring some of his tax increases if the economy remains in bad shape. According to Furman, Obama will consider cutting the corporate tax rate while revising the tax code to eliminate business incentives to accumulate more debt and to discourage moves offshore. And in Obama's interview with Fortune, the candidate suggested that his overheated rhetoric on NAFTA was just that - overheated rhetoric.

Asked what single economic concern worries him most and will be uppermost on his mind if he steps into the Oval Office next January, Obama said energy supplies. "It's not a problem I think we can drill our way out of," he says. "It can be a drag on our economy for a very long time unless we take steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that's needed to find alternative fuels, to make our transportation system more energy efficient, retool our industry and our buildings."

[stellanoir]

10. thanks so much

this is what I was looking for

much appreciated

[Barack_America]

12. Two words: Warren Buffet.

That man knows a thing or two about sound investments. And he's endorsed Obama.

[TreasonousBastard]

14. Well, he shouldn't really have to worry...

Here's a few Reaganites from the notorious "Chicago School" on his team:

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/obamas-economic-advisers/

And here's the one of the latest additions who is not seen as a raging socialist:
www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-furman11-2008jun11,0,2347842.story

There's also Michael Froman who worked for Rubin-- Clinton's free-trade Treasury Secretary.

Now, while the Socialists here (and I admit I am one of them) will keel over at the thought of any of these gaining any actual influence, it's not really as bad as it seems. All of them are far more mainstream than the Reagan nutters who tried to tear everything down or the Bush thieves who tied to runa away with everything not nailed down. I would call them "conservative" in the sense of not messing things up any more than they are now.

[babylonsister]

15. Here's a link, and the whole site is worth a gander:

http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/2008/06/obama-economic-advisors-and-economic.html

[stellanoir]

20. Perfect

thanks sista.

I just forwarded him much of what is posted here inclusive of your link.

[Hamlette]

16. here's what I send GOP lackies but . . .

they respond by saying "I could find statistics to support my position too if I had the time. Any Clinton lied under oath blah blah blah."



http://www.newsnshit.com/charts/deficit.html

[Shakespeare]

17. If he's really a big (business) wheel, just say the words "Chicago school."

And if that doesn't satisfy him and shut him up, then he's an uneducated idiot.

[Adelante]

19. Richard Thaler

There is a different view of what Obama's advisors are about than Naomi Klein has. For one thing, in the economics team, the major influence is Richard Thaler, a behavioral economist. What that means is someone who looks at the small things in life that change the big things in life when people are eased into making better choices. For example, automatic bill-paying can stave off a bad credit rating or payroll deductions can build a savings account. Everyone wants to pay their bills on time and save money, but it's more of a sure thing if a small system is put in place that ensures its happening. One of Thaler's books is Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. The nudges are those small systems that change your life.

Thaler thinks of himself as a "libertarian paternalist" according to this New York Times interview, or "choice architect," one who devises those small systems for better choices, which can be opted into or out of at will.

From an article by Noam Scheiber.

By the late '80s, Thaler had begun recording these observations in a column for a leading academic journal. The column laid the groundwork for a book, called The Winner's Curse, published in 1994. And the book widely signaled the arrival of a previously obscure sub-field known as behavioral economics. Behaviorists like Thaler believed that the perfectly rational, utterly self interested maximizers of economists' imaginations had little in common with actual human beings, who frequently err when making simple calculations, who have trouble with self-control, who often act out of altruism or spite.

But what's really interesting is how Thaler and his fellow behaviorists responded to this fairly critical insight. Though rational self-interest was the central tenet of neoclassical (i.e., modern) economics, they didn't take a wrecking ball to the field and replace it with some equally sweeping theory of human behavior. Instead, they labored to bring economics closer in line with how the world actually works, one small adjustment at a time.

-snip

And, yet, it's not just the details of Obama's policies that suggest a behavioral approach. In some respects, the sensibility behind the behaviorist critique of economics is one shared by all the Obama wonks, whether they're domestic policy nerds or grizzled foreign policy hands. Despite Obama's reputation for grandiose rhetoric and utopian hope-mongering, the Obamanauts aren't radicals--far from it. They're pragmatists--people who, when an existing paradigm clashes with reality, opt to tweak that paradigm rather than replace it wholesale. As Thaler puts it, "Physics with friction is not as beautiful. But you need it to get rockets off the ground." It might as well be the motto for Obama's entire policy shop.

I hope you will read the entire article.

It shows something often missed about Obama: He is not an ideologue; he is a pragmatist. He is about solving problems and getting things done. He will hear advice from all sorts of experts. He doesn't always agree with his advisors. He draws his own conclusions.

Contrary to what Klein thinks, Obama is not embedded in any mindset. He takes information from many sides and processes it with his own ideas and makes a decision.

He is, for example, pro-regulation and wants to return New Deal-type protections in financial markets that were removed in 1999 - i.e. Glass-Steagall Acts.

In the more than two centuries since then, we have struggled to balance the same forces that confronted Hamilton and Jefferson - self-interest and community; markets and democracy; the concentration of wealth and power, and the necessity of transparency and opportunity for each and every citizen. Throughout this saga, Americans have pursued their dreams within a free market that has been the engine of America's progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and opportunity for generations of Americans. A market that has provided great rewards to the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon for science, and technology, and discovery.

But the American experiment has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle. Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest. We have done this not to stifle - but rather to advance prosperity and liberty. As I said at NASDAQ last September: the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned.

-snip

Let me be clear: the American economy does not stand still, and neither should the rules that govern it. The evolution of industries often warrants regulatory reform - to foster competition, lower prices, or replace outdated oversight structures. Old institutions cannot adequately oversee new practices. Old rules may not fit the roads where our economy is leading. There were good arguments for changing the rules of the road in the 1990s. Our economy was undergoing a fundamental shift, carried along by the swift currents of technological change and globalization. For the sake of our common prosperity, we needed to adapt to keep markets competitive and fair.

Unfortunately, instead of establishing a 21st century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one - aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight. In doing so, we encouraged a winner take all, anything goes environment that helped foster devastating dislocations in our economy.

Deregulation of the telecommunications sector, for example, fostered competition but also contributed to massive over-investment. Partial deregulation of the electricity sector enabled market manipulation. Companies like Enron and WorldCom took advantage of the new regulatory environment to push the envelope, pump up earnings, disguise losses and otherwise engage in accounting fraud to make their profits look better - a practice that led investors to question the balance sheet of all companies, and severely damaged public trust in capital markets. This was not the invisible hand at work. Instead, it was the hand of industry lobbyists tilting the playing field in Washington, an accounting industry that had developed powerful conflicts of interest, and a financial sector that fueled over-investment.

A decade later, we have deregulated the financial services sector, and we face another crisis. A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change because the nature of business has changed. But by the time the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework.

Obama can't be put into a box. He is a pragmatic idealist. He will do what it takes to get it done. Anybody supporting Obama who doesn't know this about him never did their homework and is bound to be disappointed. So I think it's good you are asking.

[stellanoir]

21. The article you referenced was my fave.

Thanks

I just forwarded him much of what people contributed on this thread, inclusive of your excerpts, links, and insightful commentary.

I told him it was his homework for the weekend.

LOL