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?

Obama's Economic Brain Trust?

Barack Obama plans to meet a panel of advisers today to examine his campaign’s ?economic policies. The gathering will include Warren Buffett, the billionaire ?investor, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, Paul ?Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, and ?both Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretaries.

Obama told NBC on Sunday that the team would discuss a second potential stimulus package, ways to shore up the housing market, and energy and infrastructure initiatives.

Let's see what comes out if this group. You have Goldman Sachs represented through Robert Rubin. You have the great investor Warren Buffett who turns into an economic idiot whenever he talks about economic policy.