Obama and Bush Working to Calm Volatile Market
Barack Obama steps in to the power vacuum
Obama Introduces His Economic Team
Paulson May Ask for Remaining $350 Billion of TARP
Another Crisis, Another Guarantee – Citi Group
Archive for November, 2008
Today’s News
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008Message From John Podesta
Monday, November 24th, 2008Message From Co-Chair of Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team:
| I want to make sure you didn’t miss today’s address from the President-elect, where he lays out a framework to save or create 2.5 million American jobs by 2011.
The President-elect has directed the Transition’s economic team to develop the details of a plan for a two-year, nationwide effort to strengthen our economy. It will center around jobs rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools, and making America a leader in alternative energy. After another week of devastating economic news, it’s clearer than ever that dramatic action is needed to chart a new path for our economy that gets jobs and wages growing again. We will continue to use Change.gov as a way to keep everyone up to date on the Transition — including the economic team’s progress. Thanks, John John D. Podesta, Co-Chair |
Obama’s Economic Team
Monday, November 24th, 2008Announcement of Economic Team:
Press Release:
Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury
Timothy Geithner currently serves as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he has played a key role in formulating the nation’s monetary policy. He joined the Department of the Treasury in 1988 and has served three presidents. From 1999 to 2001, he served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. Following that post he served as director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund until 2003. Geithner is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council
Lawrence Summers is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University. Summers served as 71st Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006. Before being appointed Secretary, Summers served as Deputy and Under Secretary of the Treasury and as the World Bank’s top economist. Summers has taught economics at Harvard and MIT, and is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the American economist under 40 judged to have made the most significant contribution to economics. Summers played a key advisory role during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Christina D. Romer, Director of the Council of Economic Advisors
Christina Romer is the Class of 1957 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has taught and researched since 1988. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley, Romer was an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Romer is co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been a visiting scholar at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
Melody C. Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Melody Barnes is co-director of the Agency Review Working Group for the Obama-Biden Transition Team, and served as the Senior Domestic Policy Advisor to Obama for America. Barnes previously served as Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress and as chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee from December 1995 until March 2003.
Heather A. Higginbottom, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council
Heather Higginbottom served as Policy Director for Obama for America, overseeing all aspects of policy development. From 1999 to 2007, Higginbottom served as Senator John Kerry’s Legislative Director. She also served as the Deputy National Policy Director for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign for the primary and general elections. After the 2004 election, Higginbottom founded and served as Executive Director of the American Security Project, a national security think tank. She started her career as an advocate at the national non-profit organization Communities in Schools.
The Regrets of a GOP Hitman
Thursday, November 20th, 2008“Consultant Roger Stone, the notorious political hitman who helped George W. Bush prevail in the 2000 Florida recount, tells The Daily Beast that he wishes he hadn’t.”
There Are Still Three Active Senate Races
Friday, November 14th, 2008“Americans are going through election withdrawal, trying to adjust to life without poll numbers. Really, we’ve heard quite a bit of whining on this subject lately.
But there’s still Minnesota! The U.S. Senate race there is up in the air. You may want to consider becoming totally obsessed with it, jumping out of bed every morning and racing to the computer to check for the latest vote count.” – GAIL COLLINS
Alaska – Vote tally trend favors Begich for Senate
Georgia – National Dems Start Pouring Real Money Into Georgia Senate Runoff
Minnesota – Big News Page from Huffington Post
“The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too”
Friday, November 14th, 2008From the Author James K. Galbraith:
| Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature—a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live.
Our rulers deliver favors to their clients. These range from Native American casino operators, to Appalachian coal companies, to Saipan sweatshop operators, to the would-be oil field operators of Iraq. They include the misanthropes who led the campaign to abolish the estate tax; Charles Schwab, who suggested the dividend tax cut of 2003; the “Benedict Arnold” companies who move their taxable income offshore; and the financial institutions behind last year’s bankruptcy bill. Everywhere you look, public decisions yield gains to specific private entities. For in a predatory regime, nothing is done for public reasons. Indeed, the men in charge do not recognize that “public purposes” exist. They have friends, and enemies, and as for the rest—we’re the prey. Hurricane Katrina illustrated this perfectly, as Halliburton scooped up contracts and Bush hamstrung Kathleen Blanco, the Democratic governor of Louisiana. The population of New Orleans was, at best, an afterthought; once dispersed, it was quickly forgotten. |
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James K. Galbraith teaches economics at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. He previously served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including executive director of the Joint Economic Committee.