White House Adviser Summers Hopes History Forgets This Great Recession

Price reiterates GOP calls for Geithner, Summers to step down
The GOP continued a recess push on economic issues as the Republican Study Committee chairman reiterated calls for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers to step down. "They need to resign because the policies that they're putting in place are not being effective," Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) said Friday on Fox News. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called for the ouster of Geithner and Summers Tuesday during a Speech outlining GOP economic policies in...

Former McCain Adviser Says Boehner Wrong On Stimulus, Geithner, And Summers
Former McCain economic adviser, and longtime Stimulus defender, Mark Zandi took issue today with House Minority Leader John Boehner's criticisms of President Obama's economic policies, and with multiple GOP calls for Obama's top economic advisers to resign. "I think we'd be in a measurably worse place if not for the Stimulus," Zandi said at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast this morning. "If we had not had the Stimulus...we'd have fewer jobs today than we actually have." Zandi...

Wall Street Is An Unforgiving Master
‘Money talks and nobody walks’ is an observation that applies to a great many situations. But it doesn’t quite catch the reality of the Wall Street, Washington Beltway relationship. Here, it’s not a matter of talking and walking. It’s more a case of bawling and crawling. For most of the last century the Republican Party was the universally recognized political mouthpiece of Wall Street. And for the half century between the coming of the New Deal and the 1980s, the...

The Recession and 'Regime Uncertainty'
Regime uncertainty has gained increasing recognition as the current economic troubles have persisted with little or no improvement since The Economy reached a cyclical trough early in 2009. As described in my 1997 paper , regime uncertainty pertains to the likelihood that investors private property rights in their capital and the income it yields will be attenuated further by Government action. Such attenuations can arise from many sources, ranging from simple Tax-rate increases, to the...

White House sees 'positive' GDP figure, says more needed
VINEYARD HAVEN, Massachusetts — The White House said Friday the latest US Economic Growth data represented "positive news" but that the lowered estimates mean more work is needed to keep the recovery on track. "Four consecutive quarters of Economic Growth is positive news, but the revised numbers mean there is still much more we need to do to continue on the path to recovery and that remains the focus of the president and the Economic team every single day," said a senior administration...

"Monetary Shock and Awe": The Fed prepared to launch most Radical Intervention in History
This week, the Markets were blindsided by two days of dismal housing news, grim durable goods orders, a slowdown in Manufacturing, and modest gains in employment. 4 years later, and housing is still mired in a depression. When does it end? Households and consumers are buried under a mountain of Debt; personal bankruptcies, delinquencies, defaults and Foreclosures continue to mount while politicians threaten to tighten the purse-strings putting more pressure on families who can barley put...

Obama to commemorate Katrina on 5th anniversary (AP)
Vineyard HAVEN, Mass. – President Barack Obama will use the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to reaffirm his commitment to the Gulf Coast amid lingering questions over his Administration's response to the BP Oil Spill. Obama ends his Martha's Vineyard vacation Sunday and heads to New Orleans, five years to the day from when Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, busting through crumbling Levees and Flooding 80 percent of the city, killing more than 1,600 people. Then-President George W....

Treasury Makes Shocking Admission: Program for Struggling Homeowners Just a Ploy to Enrich Big Banks
The Treasury Dept.'s Mortgage relief program isn't just failing, it's actively funneling money from Homeowners to Bankers, and Treasury likes it that way. The Treasury Department's plan to help struggling Homeowners has been failing miserably for months. The program is poorly designed , has been poorly implemented and only a tiny percentage of borrowers eligible for help have actually received any meaningful assistance. The initiative lowers monthly payments for borrowers, but fails to...

The Two Stories of This Terrible Economy, Yet Obama and the Dems Won't Tell Theirs
Obama and the Democrats respond by defending their specific policies. The Stimulus worked, they say, as did the Bailout of Wall Street, because The Economy is better today than it would be without them. If anything, we need more Stimulus. And Healthcare Reform will protect tens of millions. A large and growing segment of the public believes none of this. The public doesn't think in terms of specific policies. All it knows is the economy has stalled and there's only one story that explains...

Enforcement Rises After Accidents, Recalls
After the Explosion that rocked a West Virginia Mine, killing 29 workers, Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors have stepped up their efforts , using the regulatory tools already available to them to expand their enforcement activities. A Reform Bill making its way through Congress would expand the Mine regulator’s authority, but what’s already changed is that inspectors are now using preexisting powers to a much fuller extent — particularly their ability to...

Bernanke Promises Fed Help if US Economy Tanks
Speaking Friday at a posh resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke promised more assistance should the U.S. Economy show weakness. He claims the Fed still has tools in the box to help should the recovery slip into a Double Dip Recession. Many will argue it already has, some even say we’ve officially have degenerated into a depression. In the past couple of weeks, the projected forecast for GDP growth has been downgraded not once, but twice! First from 3.5%...

Loss of Hope for the Economy Spells Wrong Kind of Change for Democrats
Gross Domestic Product grew by a pathetic (downward revised) 1.6 percent in the second quarter . This means we are not technically in a Recession, but as Paul Krugman aptly put it today, so what. Given that we are a country with a growing Population, we would need 2.5 percent Growth just to keep Unemployment stable. (On a side note, I think it is time to change the official definition of a Recession to take into account the rate of Population Growth.) We are not in a Recovery, and the ...

W.Va. gov. wins Democratic primary for US Senate
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Popular Gov. Joe Manchin won the Democratic nomination Saturday and will face GOP Primary winner and wealthy businessman John Raese in the race to fill the Senate seat vacated by the late Robert C. Byrd. Raese defeated a crowded field of Republicans and becomes part of the GOP quest to dismantle the Democratic Senate majority as high Unemployment and the slow Economic Recovery take a toll on their political prospects this fall. In Louisiana, Scandal-tainted Republican...

W.Va. governor wins Dem nomination for US Senate; Vitter cruises in GOP primary in La.
Businessman John Raese, flanked by his daughters, from left, Agnes and Jane and wife Liz, addresses his supporters at the Hotel Morgan i after being declared the Republican winner in the West Virginia primary, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010 in Morgantown, W.Va. Raese, a wealthy businessman, defeated a crowded field of GOP Candidates. He now becomes key to the GOP's quest to dismantle the Democratic Senate majority. Democrats are clinging to the majority as high Unemployment and the slow Economic...

Fiorina opposes Net Neutrality, rips Boxer for regulatory expansion
Carly Fiorina stepped up her attack on Barbara Boxer by scolding her for backing a regulatory expansion into the Internet instead of fixing the broken systems that already exist — and that hurt the tech sector. Fiorina came out explicitly against Net Neutrality and the effort by the Obama Administration to impose it by bureaucratic fiat. Politico thinks that the Silicon Valley vote is already sewn up, but Fiorina has already put Boxer on the defensive over the Guest-visa system that...

We Need Policy - Not Politics - To Rebuild America
As Recovery wanes, dissatisfaction runs deep, but this public appeal seems more the initiate of a campaign for majority House Speaker than the proffer of solution to the financial downturn that plagues our nation.  While I agree that Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers have not delivered on the administration’s promise of Economic Recovery, we need not a change of the guard and a revamp of Rhetoric - we need a business plan to rebuild America. Only changes in policy will ignite job...

The Economist's 'Buttonwood Gathering'
The Economist 's Buttonwood Gathering on "fixing finance" had no shortage of big names on stage. Speakers included Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, George Soros, Niall Ferguson, Robert Shiller, and Elizabeth Warren. First off, assembling a conference with a slogan like "fixing finance" sets lofty expectations. And some of the speakers did offer realistic and sound ideas for reform. Elizabeth Warren , head of the TARP Oversight Committee , said we need "the toughest...

More on 'recovery summer' rolling downhill (and picking up speed)
Looks like our earlier post today wasn't adequately pessimistic. As Dan Riehl points out , the market's below 10K, the bad GDP number we mentioned indeed looms, and Cramer's predicting mass panic. Clearly, John Boehner's right ; Obama should throw up his hands and start anew on The Economy, beginning with calling for the Resignations of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council chief Larry Summers and the rest of his economic team. This will do in the interim between now and...

The Elites Have Lost The Right to Rule
A government always finds itself obliged to resort to inflationary measures when it cannot negotiate loans and dare not levy taxes, because it has reason to fear that it will forfeit approval of the Policy it is following if it reveals too soon the financial and general Economic consequences of that Policy. Thus Inflation becomes the most important psychological resource of any Economic Policy whose consequences have to be concealed; and so in this sense it can be called an instrument of...

Team Obama Is Courting Everybody But the Press
GREENVILLE, S.C. -- When reporters filed onto Barack Obama's Press plane after his acrimonious debate with Hillary Rodham Clinton last week, one thing was noticeably missing amid the wine and snacks on the Boeing 737. There was no high-level Campaign spinner to argue that Obama had gotten the better of the exchanges or that the verbal fisticuffs were part of some precisely calculated strategy. On the Press bus the next day, mid-level aides dealt with travel logistics but made no attempt to...

Racial and ethnic exploitation of economic insecurity
AP Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post , today : Note what connects these issues. In every one, Liberals have lost the argument in the court of Public Opinion. Majorities -- often lopsided majorities -- oppose President Obama's Social-democratic agenda (e.g., the Stimulus, ObamaCare), support the Arizona law, oppose Gay Marriage and reject a Mosque near Ground Zero. Yahoo! News , August 12, 2010 : A new CNN poll has found that most Americans think Gays and Lesbians should have...

Recovery Bummer [Darleen Click]
So, how’s that Hopey, Changey thing goin’ for you? Washington (AP) - The government is about to confirm what many people have felt for some time: The Economy barely has a pulse. The Commerce Department on Friday will revise its estimate for Economic Growth in the April-to-June period and Wall Street Economists forecast it will be cut almost in half, to a 1.4 percent annual Rate from 2.4 percent. That’s a sharp slowdown from the first quarter, when The Economy grew at...

Will Perriello make demand for Geithner's firing in Washington?
When John Boehner demanded that Barack Obama fire Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and revamp his entire Economic Policy team, the White House ignored the call. Vice President Joe Biden sarcastically thanked Boehner for his advice, claiming that it was a voice from the past that would derail the administration’s glorious Recovery Summer. However, it turns out that Boehner isn’t the first in the House to demand a shakeup from the Oval Office. Democrat Tom Perriello told a...

Embattled Democrat calling on Geithner to go
From CNN Producer Lesa Jansen Virginia Rep. Tom Perriello called Friday for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to resign. Washington (CNN) - It's not just Republicans calling for President Obama's economic advisers to go. An embattled member of the president's own party has publicly called for the Resignation of the top member of the administration's economic team. Rep. Tom Perriello, a Virginia Democrat, called for the Resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at a Town hall Meeting in...

AP's Econ Coverage Continues Singular Focus on Bernanke, Non-Naming of Others in Govt.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's first full day as the only person in the whole wide world with any kind of influence over what happens in The Economy didn't go too badly. That's the impression one might get from consuming two Friday Associated dispatches and a related AP Video. Bernanke apparently took full charge of anything and everything having to do with The Economy on Thursday evening. As noted early Friday morning (at NewsBusters ; at BizzyBlog ), two Thursday afternoon dispatches from the...