This was initially posted at McAlvany Intelligence Advisor:
With Monday’s announcement that Jason Furman will be taking over from Alan Krueger as chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, some have asked: who is he?
The short answer is that he is a
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When President Obama’s tax plan was revealed, international accounting giant Ernst & Young (E&Y) was asked to analyze it by the National Federation of Independent Business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. When the firm announced its conclusions that his plan would slow the weak economy even further, the White House attacked the study as containing “major flaws, errors and misleading statements.”
Obama’s tax plan is more than just “taxing the rich”—it contains a mixture of tax credits for hiring new employees, a mortgage credit, an “American Opportunity Tax Credit” to entice more young people to get into debt to fund their college educations, an increase in the child and dependent care tax credits, and an extension of and increase in the earned income tax credit.
It would also eliminate all income taxes for seniors with incomes less than $50,000 per year, and would temporarily eliminate income tax on unemployment insurance benefits—both clear political plays for the senior and unemployed vote in the November elections.
It also reinstates the estate tax and would eliminate “loopholes” for oil and gas firms, while providing tax credits for green “renewable” investments. It would create a watch list of international tax havens in order to force “greater financial disclosure” to discourage the use of tax shelters by the wealthy trying to avoid taxes.
But the centerpiece of Obama’s plan is allowing the Bush tax cuts on incomes, capital gains, and dividends for those making over $250,000 a year to expire—essentially a huge tax increase on those with capital. And that’s what the report’s authors, Drs. Robert Carroll and Gerald Prante, focused on: What impact would the imposition of those new taxes have on
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This week President Obama will roll out his strategic jobs growth plan in a major speech, and has announced that his new chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, is just the man to help him with it. Krueger comes from the same mold as the man he is replacing, Austan Goolsbee. Goolsbee graduated from Yale, Krueger from Cornell. Goolsbee got his PhD from MIT, Krueger got his from Harvard. Goolsbee worked for the National Bureau of Economic Research, and so did Krueger. Goolsbee is returning to the University of Chicago, while Krueger is leaving Princeton to join Obama.
But the president insists that Krueger will bring him “unvarnished economic guidance…[which is] more important than ever right now. We need folks in Washington to
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Unnamed White House and U.S. Treasury sources told MoneyNews.com that options to handle the government’s debts in the event no debt ceiling deal is reached are being explored, despite official protestations to the contrary.
Mary Miller, Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, is in charge of paying the government’s bills, and on June 21 she repeated the party line in London to bankers holding substantial American debt that there is no “Plan B,” assuring them that the debt limit would be raised before August 2. Official Treasury spokeswoman Colleen Murray expressed practically the same thing:
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Just one year ago this week the Senate Special Committee on Aging, headed up by wealthy and aging Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), announced that massive shortfalls in funding for Social Security could be papered over with just a few modest “tweaks“:
Modest changes can be made over time that will keep the program in surplus. They are not draconian, as the report points out, and they can be done and [they] will be done.
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Even if the Obama administration is able to persuade (or bludgeon) enough Democrats into passing his latest version of healthcare, it would still be financial lunacy.
Last summer CNS News reported on the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of President Obama’s initial public offering for healthcare, which they called “fairly blistering…concerning the ability of the…plans to save money and control health care costs for the long term.” According to CBS, the Director of the CBO, Doug Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee that none of the bills he has seen would reduce health care costs: “In the legislation that has been [analyzed so far] we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of…health care spending by a significant amount…On the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.”
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When the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last Friday that the economy lost only 36,000 jobs in February, the usual choristers took that as good news. Christina Romer, the Chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers said, “Today’s report on the employment situation is consistent with the pattern of stabilization and gradual labor market healing we have been seeing in recent months.”
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When the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that “the output of goods and services…increased at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009,” the usual suspects in the kept media could hardly restrain themselves. ABC News’ headline trumpeted, “Economy Grows…Fastest Since 2003” which was “fueled by companies boosting output to keep stockpiles up.” Their announcement explained that “Growth exceeded expectations mainly because business spending on equipment and software jumped much more than [was] forecast.”
Long-renowned economist Paul Samuelson died on December 13 at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts, at the age of 94. In addition to writing Economics in 1948 — which became the best selling economics textbook for several decades, having been translated into forty-one languages and selling over four million copies — Samuelson also won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1970.
The chorus of accolades of effusive praise continues to resonate:
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In its attempt to glorify “the 10 who shaped the U.S. economy the most since 2000,” ABC News did a great favor for those interested in the interconnections among the “elite” who are impacting the current world economic and political scene.
Naturally, much was left unsaid about these “captains,” especially regarding their connections to the elite currently in charge. In order, then, here is a brief look at each of these “10 who shaped the U. S. economy”:
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