New CEA Head on EPJ's Unrequited Emails List

President Barack Obama has chosen Austan Goolsbee as the new head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Goolsbee was the senior economic advisor to the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. Following Obama's election, Goolsbee declared that the White House economic team would be all inclusive so that the President would receive a broad spectrum of views on the economy. After it became clear no Austrian economists were to be included in the President's "all inclusive" team, I sent him this email in December 2008:

From: Robert Wenzel
To:goolsbee@gsb.uchicago.edu

Dear Dr. Goolsbee,

Congratulations on being named to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

I note that in this video you hail President-elect Obama for his willingness to put differing views before him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecW6YLGnuIs

Your exact words are "It's very Obama in that he doesn't try to shunt out other views...he wants to bring people with different views to the table."

This struck me, since I have also noted that President-elect Obama has not put anyone on his many economic advisory groups, the CEA, the NEC, and the group that you will be a member of, the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, that represent the thinking of the Austrian School of economics.

I find this curious since as President-elect Obama has said, we are in a severe downturn in the economy. As you know, one of the areas of study for which the Austrian School is known is their business cycle theory. And their views do seem to differ from the views of members he has appointed to his advisory groups.

And, as you know, the late Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize for his thought in Business Cycle Theory. Indeed, I was pleased to note on a visit to the University of Chicago, where you are the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, that at the University's Gleacher Center, Professor Hayek is honored with the display of his photograph as a Nobel Prize winner and his affiliation with the University of Chicago is noted.

Perhaps there is something I am missing as to why not even one Austrian has been named to the Obama team, if so I would greatly appreciate if you could enlighten me as to what I am missing.

Or perhaps, President-elect Obama is simply not familiar with the Austrian School, and if that is the case, I wonder if it would be possible for you to bring to his attention the fact that as you say, "he wants to bring people with different views to the table" and that he may have missed bringing to the discussion economists from the respected Austrian School, who have unique insights in many areas of economics, but especially in business cycle theory.

Sincerely,

Robert Wenzel
Editor & Publisher
EconomicPolicyJournal.com

Goolsbee has not yet responded to my email.
Goolbee replaces Christina Romer as chair of the CEA. A White House news conference is planned for 1100am EST on Friday.

Goolsbee is a graduate of Yale (and received his PhD from MIT) and a member of Yale's elitist secret society, Skull & Bones.

Goolsbee has appeared on the Jon Stewart Show and the Colbert Report. Mainstream D.C. media loves this guy.Even George Will has called him, "amiable, empirical and reasonable." In 2009, he was voted The Funniest Celebrity in Washington.

He'll fit right in with the Obama White House. He believes the negative incentive caused by higher taxes is exaggerated, and believes government should be more involved in promoting college education. He believes the GI Bill was prolific in stimulating propaganda  human capital.

So expect lots of jokes and interventionist ideas but he will have no clue when it comes to responding to questions about the business cycle.

In July 2009, he said on The Colbert Report, "In one year, the economy is going to be in a very happy place.":

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Austan Goolsbee
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Bottom Line: This guy is about advancing the Obama regime and nothing else.

Goofy Goolsbee Takes the Prize

White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee won first prize in the 16th annual "D.C.'s Funniest Celebrity" contest on Wednesday evening.

His thigh slappers included this one about arriving in the White House in the middle of a recession:

We kinda had to go back and look at the old text books (Karl Marx, Trotsky).

Maybe working on one-liners like this is why he hasn't had time, yet, to respond to the email I sent him last December.

National Face Time for Austan Goolsbee

White House economist Austan Goolsbee recently appeared on the Colbert Show. He currently is serving under President Obama as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers and as staff director and chief economist of the going nowhere federal panel, the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board chaired by Paul Volcker.

There is zero to learn from this video about Obama economic policy, but it is interesting to note that Goolsbee received this face time just days after NYT did a Q & A with him. Somebody in the White House is promoting him and raising his profile for something. A replacement for Larry Summers, if Summers moves to the Fed?

From the NYT interview, we learn he is quite willing to tow the line on any nonsense coming out of the Obama Administration and he is verbally skillful at doing so.

As for his economic thinking, it appears he has no business cycle theory and admits that he is pretty much simply a data dog.

He is considered a member of the "New Social Economics" school of thought, along with Steven D. Levitt. I wonder if his thinking is more rigorous than the embarrassing effort put out by Levitt in the book Freakonomics.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Austan Goolsbee
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

My Unrequited Emails of 2008

For ages poets have sought to find the words to explain the pain and sadness of unrequited love, I have no such task before me. However, I must now put fingers to keyboard to explain my 2008 experiences of unrequited emails.

It has happened twice this year, and as the last few hours of 2008 tick down, there is a certain finality to the fact that responses to these emails I will not receive.

I sent the first such email in mid-October to Jackie Wilson, who is Warren Buffett's new media contact. You can read the email, here. In my brief conversation with her, before I sent the email, it was clear that Buffett's folksy charm was not something she specialized in. It was clear Buffett hired her as, well, a buffer. But one has to wonder, how long Wilson will survive at Berkshire Hathaway's worldwide headquarters. Wilson has the concepts buffer and abrasive confused, and, from Alice Schroder's biography of Buffett, it is plenty apparent that Buffett doesn't like abrasive. Wilson may walk on egg shells around Buffett, but some of that abrasiveness must show through. And a little birdie has suggested to me that Wilson is much more interested in how the "Jackie Wilson" name is percieved rather than the name "Warren Buffett". If Buffett figures this all out, then Buffett may well end up giving her the John Gutfreund treatment, before 2009 is over.

My second unrequited email was sent to Austan Goolsbee, an economist and Obama advisor, he proclaimed that Obama likes to hear differing views and wants to bring different views to the table. Since this was the case, according to Goolsbee, I wrote to ask him why this diversity of views did not include any Austrian economists. Goolsbee has failed to respond. Here is the original email to him.

And so, the year closes, with basic questions unanswered by those who should know the answers. Perhaps Goolsbee and Wilson should keep in mind the words of another Wilson, Earl Wilson, when he said,“Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough,” and my emails are not about snow or adolescence.

An Open Letter to Austan Goolsbee

From: Robert Wenzel
To:goolsbee@gsb.uchicago.edu

Dear Dr. Goolsbee,

Congratulations on being named to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

I note that in this video you hail President-elect Obama for his willingness to put differing views before him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecW6YLGnuIs

Your exact words are "It's very Obama in that he doesn't try to shunt out other views...he wants to bring people with different views to the table."

This struck me, since I have also noted that President-elect Obama has not put anyone on his many economic advisory groups, the CEA, the NEC, and the group that you will be a member of, the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, that represents the thinking of the Austrian School of economics.

I find this curious since as President-elect Obama has said, we are in a severe downturn in the economy. As you know, one of the areas of study for which the Austrian School is known is their business cycle theory. And their views do seem to differ from the views of members he has appointed to his advisory groups.

And, as you know, the late Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize for his thought in Business Cycle Theory. Indeed, I was pleased to note on a visit to the University of Chicago, where you are the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, that at the University's Gleacher Center, Professor Hayek is honored with the display of his photograph as a Nobel Prize winner and his affiliation with the University of Chicago is noted.

Perhaps there is something I am missing as to why not even one Austrian has been named to the Obama team, if so I would greatly appreciate if you could enlighten me as to what I am missing.

Or perhaps, President-elect Obama is simply not familiar with the Austrian School, and if that is the case, I wonder if it would be possible for you to bring to his attention the fact that as you say, "he wants to bring people with different views to the table" and that he may have missed bringing to the discussion economists from the respected Austrian School, who have unique insights in many areas of economics, but especially in business cycle theory.

Sincerely,

Robert Wenzel
Editor & Publisher
EconomicPolicyJournal.com

Another Economic Team

President-elect Barack Obama has announced yet one more economic team and appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman, and Rockefeller operative, Paul Volcker to be the chairman of the new advisory board tasked.

University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, one of Mr. Obama's longest-serving policy advisers, will serve as the board's staff director, along with his duties as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Members of the panel will be drawn from a cross-section of citizens outside the government, chosen for their independence and non partisanship.

The panel will be called the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Clearly, Obama is trying to get a cross section of advice. The man really seems to be taking the presidency seriously and trying, but given the penchant for inflationist and interventionist policies among the current members of these teams, yes even from Volcker, the more infighting that will go on between them, the better. Here's to interventionist gridlock.

Obama's Core Belief System

The soundbites off the release of the Obama Chicago Public Radio interview, do not surprise U.S. News and World Report's James Pethokoukis:

This should be a Saturday Night Live sketch. Use the court to redistribute wealth? Really? The Warren court was not radical? Really? Anyone could craft a theoretical justification to use the court to spread the wealth? Really? This all strikes me as highly weird...Keep in mind, now, that every Obama economic adviser I can think of—Warren Buffett, Austan Goolsbee, Jason Furman, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Jared Bernstein—thinks that we need higher income and investment taxes to deal with income inequality and that tax rates would pretty much have to double before they would hurt the economy. So Obama's comments reflect a core belief system that he's apparently held for years and continues to hold.

Will we yearn for the days gone by when only the banks were nationalized and Paulson stuffed billions into the pockets of his crony buddies?