The temporary brain trust
If the new president looked a little, well, burdened on election night, chances are he's aging a couple of years in the six-hour span between the release of unemployment figures this morning and his first news conference as president-elect this afternoon.
6.5% unemployment in October — worst since early Clintontime. Worse still were the revisions of the August and September numbers. And as Karl Denninger noticed, the number of unemployed plus the number of people working part-time who'd like to work full-time now tops 11%. (And who knows what the real figure would turn out to be once John Williams applies Carter-era standards to the numbers.)
As I write, the president-elect is meeting with his "Transition Economic Advisory Board," his temporary brain trust as it were. The names on the panel are, well, interesting. Some of the faces from I.O.U.S.A. are there. But one has to wonder if the calls for fiscal prudence from the likes of Buffett, Rubin, and Volcker in the movie and book will be drowned out by calls for urgent Keynesian measures in the face of imminent economic meltdown. Certainly the presence of two Michiganders on the panel — Gov. Jennifer Granholm and former House Democratic Whip David Bonior — suggests a big bailout for Detroit is in the works.
Still other names belong to the money-shuffling class who got us into this mess, or their enablers.
We dealt with Larry Summers yesterday. Then there's one of Bush 43's SEC chairmen, William Donaldson. He puts a bipartisan sheen on things, and ensures Skull and Bones participation on the panel to boot. But more relevant here is that he was the SEC chairman who, at Hank Paulson's bidding in 2004, agreed to let the big investment banks jack up their leverage from 12-to-1 to 40-to-1. And we know how well that worked out. Penny Pritzker? She was chairman at Superior Bank of Chicago, which lent subprime before subprime was cool. She was on its board all the way up until Superior's collapse in 2001; the Pritzker family had to fork over a $460 million settlement to the government.
The full membership of the panel is listed below. Job descriptions are those provided by Team Obama. Any other revealing nuggets here?
-David Bonior (Member House of Representatives 1977-2003)
-Warren Buffett (Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway)-will participate via speakerphone
-Roel Campos (former SEC Commissioner)
-William Daley (Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Commerce, 1997-2000)
-William Donaldson (Former Chairman of the SEC 2003-2005)
-Roger Ferguson (President and CEO, TIAA-CREF and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve)
-Jennifer Granholm (Governor, State of Michigan)
-Anne Mulcahy (Chairman and CEO, Xerox)
-Richard Parsons (Chairman of the Board, Time Warner)
-Penny Pritzker (CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt)
-Robert Reich (University of California, Berkeley; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Labor, 1993-1997)
-Robert Rubin (Chairman and Director of the Executive Committee, Citigroup; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1995-1999)
-Eric Schmidt (Chairman and CEO, Google)
-Lawrence Summers (Harvard University; Managing Director, D.E. Shaw; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1999-2001)
-Laura Tyson (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; Former Chairman, National Economic Council, 1995-1996; Former Chairman, President’s Council of Economic Advisors, 1993-1995)
-Antonio Villaraigosa (Mayor, City of Los Angeles)
-Paul Volcker (Former Chairman, US Federal Reserve 1979-1987)
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In other words, same old same old. Sigh!
Comment on November 7, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
Ha.Ha. What a funny panel. Just another attempt to try to central plan ourselves out of this mess. The Mayor of LA is on that panel. What does he know about economics? What do any politicians know about economics?
Comment on November 7, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
Some things never change. The quote below is from Benjamin Franklin.
“No man’s life, liberty or fortune is safe when the legislature is in session”.
I can hardly wait to find out how this group of “unique” individuals decides how OUR money should be used.
Comment on November 7, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
Gads, I’m not feeling “change” here. Looking at this list, only Berkshire-Hathaway and Google are companies that are doing well–why would he bother taking any advice from the others? The Google connection makes me suspicious. Is he going to use them to troll the net for dirt on his opponents (grep your gmail account), or proliferate disinfo? I’m not sure what to feel about Volker, who’d probably tell Obama that he will have to raise interest rates above the ACTUAL inflation rate, which (if you believe John Williams) is somewhere north of 12% now. He might save the economy by doing it but would assure that he would not be re-elected and end up as Jimmy Carter II.
Comment on November 7, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Hey, who cares about the economy? The most important thing is that an African-American was elected to the presidency for the first time in US history. Doesn’t that make you feel proud? To quote my wife, “You always talk about money.”
Let’s face it, there will be no centrally-planned salvation from this messiah; so, we had better have our prison conversion now, and wait for the next life.
Comment on November 8, 2008 @ 9:59 am
What happens to a society the keeps borrowing or printing imaginary fiat monoploy game money in order to prop up politically connected but massively unprofitable corporations ? We are going to find out !
Comment on November 8, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
Are any of the chicks on the panel hot at least?
Comment on November 9, 2008 @ 12:34 pm
I want Paul Krugman….he’s smart, and he’s not affiliated with major corporations.
Why not?
Comment on November 9, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
Ah, the candidate of “hope and change” is going with a lot of the same old people. Granholm, the governor of Michigan, has been presiding over a one-state recession for several years now.
Comment on November 9, 2008 @ 9:56 pm
we are all f_cked. We are probably going to have a rally up to 10,000 or so. Sell out at the next interim top.
Comment on November 10, 2008 @ 10:34 am
we are all f_cked. We are probably going to have a rally up to 10,000 or so. Sell out at the next interim top.
Comment on November 10, 2008 @ 10:34 am
Hey! Where’s justabrother? I thought sure he’d be here, today, touting the great Obama & his deciples - ahh, excuse me, I mean transition team and how they’re going to deliver us from evil. Darn! How I miss his witty reparte…well half of it, anyway.
Comment on November 10, 2008 @ 3:34 pm