10 Reasons Christina Romer Is a Good Choice to Head the CEA

by: Brad DeLong November 24, 2008    

Brad DeLong

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Talking Points on the designation of Christina D. Romer as the candidate to be nominated to the Senate for the post of Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers:

  • World-class expert on the Great Depression: if you want to avoid any of the mistakes made during the Great Depression, she is the one to hire.
  • World-class expert on monetary and fiscal policy: encyclopedic knowledge of their history--since we need a CEA chair who knows more about stabilization policy than about tax or labor or industrial organization policy.
  • Very good at explaining economics: great similarities between teaching Econ 1 and teaching the White House staff about economics.
    • Very good at making people believe that relatively complicated ideas about economics are simple facts of nature.
  • Bush moved the CEA staff out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building:
    • A very bad thing because the CEA staff can no longer look over the shoulders of the White House staff and offer advice.
    • CDR should demand, as a condition of appointment, that at least her two deputies have offices in the White House complex.
  • A center-left moderate:
    • But these are not moderate times. To be moderate now is to be radical. To be radical is to be moderate.
  • A woman who taught her then-two year old that the answer to the question "Who should be president?" was "Bruce Babbitt."

Other appointees:

  • Geithner, Summers, Orszag--world-class appointments; at least as well qualified as anybody else in the world for these jobs.
  • Who is going to be the consensus-builder?
    • You need a person to build a happy consensus among economic policy advisers.
    • If you don't have a builder of the happy consensus, then you have a situation in which lobbyists, spin-doctors, and rogue vice presidents have points of entry in order to make bad policy.


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This article has 3 comments:

  •  
    Nov 25 12:19 AM
    Indeed. A consensus builder. Great minds like these do not think alike. What about asking Dr Who to attend cabinet and committee meetings for a while
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  •  
    Nov 25 12:22 AM
    Again there is the assumption that if you just appoint well qualified people, and do all the 'right just so' moves, every thing well resolve sooner. Anything that was done in the 30's, in my view, probably did not shorten it's duration. And if there was no WWII, perhaps it would have been longer. So for this severe downturn (gas prices at embargo level of '73!, as indicator), it will take a long time. Economic cycles are longer than political cycles. Piling on debt since 80's, and the government continuing to max out on piling on debt, is wrong. We will pay dearly for this, by assuring a lengthening of this extreme deleveraging environment. One generation (25 yrs) is my call to deleverage completely. Why? Because the politicians will ignore astronomical debt. Good luck to all of us. Only 'Adam Smith's' creditors (via capital market) can stop the DEBT JUGARNAUT, by there economic votes.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 25 03:28 AM
    "Very good at making people believe that relatively complicated ideas about economics are simple facts of nature"

    Yes, the problem is that the simple "facts" that economists convey (i.e., free trade benefits everyone, free markets benefit everyone, etc.) aren't facts, but judgments that are as often wrong as right.

    "World-class expert on the Great Depression: if you want to avoid any of the mistakes made during the Great Depression, she is the one to hire."

    When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; and when you are a world-class expert on the Great Depression every problem looks like the Great Depression rather than hyperinflation in Weimar Germany.
    Reply | Link to Comment
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