Obama's Economic Team Not Pro-Market
Some commentaries in the press in the last few days have tried to present Obama's economic team as being "pro-market."
In a recent symposium that I was asked to participate in on the National Review Online website, I suggested that the economic team that is being put together by the present-elect is most certainly not pro-market. They want to manipulate markets to achieve their interventionist and welfare redistributive policies.
My brief comments may be accessed through the AIER website.
Comments (13)
"they are all on board to design and implement a vast deficit spending package that will end up doing far more harm than any good"
A recent article in The New Yorker (George Packer, I believe) reported that Obama chose not to appoint Rubin as Treasury Secretary precisely because he has been an advocate for balanced budgets in the past.
Published: November 26, 2008 9:37 PM
Prof. Eberling,
Thank you for so concisely articulating what are increasing becoming my conscious fears for the very near future.
Published: November 26, 2008 10:53 PM
Let's go to the heart of the issue. Forget the rhetoric about the market because the word 'market' is being tainted just like the word 'captalism' has been tainted.
The question that makes it clear what their purpose is and what is their perspective can be boldly stated by this inquiry: Are these individuals ego-driven interventionists?
Ego-driven? They are arrogant enough to think that their finite minds can comprehend the infinite economy, aren't they?
Interventionists? They are ignorant enough to interfere with the flow of information (that is in its highest degree of perfection in an unhampered economy), aren't they?
They are not pro-market, they are profane.
Published: November 26, 2008 11:08 PM
Wow. Anyone relley thought they would get something new and different from barack obama. If people do not change there beliefs then this country is going streight to hell.
(sorry for any problems, have been drinking a little and could not help add my opinion.)
Published: November 27, 2008 12:54 AM
The recent choice of Paul Volker to join Obama's team seemed a little unusual to me. Volker was the FED chariman who damaged the Reagan administration by generating a deflation in the early 1980s. How could a deflationist fit in with the inflation-as-stimulation team Obama has put together. Then just this morning I was reading how monetarism was falling apart as the FED over and over attempts to stimulate the economy through loose monetary policy without results. That is when I realized that Volker is not a deflationist but a monetarist who believe in the quantity theory of monetary value. Volker will not be a voice for monetary restraint as he was in the 1980s. He will just be another quantity theorist attempting to jump-start the economy though inflation.
Once again I see double digit unemployment by 4th qtr 2009 at the latest.
Published: November 27, 2008 8:41 AM
To the government the perfect economy would be one where everyone gets paid by the government and taxed by the government. Everything is regulated to its smallest detail and overseen by a Czar of something.
There will be no dissent. You will either work for the government or you will be in prison.
Published: November 27, 2008 8:45 AM
Dear Jason: Please lay off the sauce, and correct your spelling and grammar. Feel free to let me know if you'd like some help. You've got some valid and valuable opinions, but the drinking apparently does not enhance their expression. - Vern Peterman, Denver, CO.
Published: November 27, 2008 11:17 AM
I certainly agree Obama and appointes are not pro-market. But who in Washington is? They are all anti- free market. Antii individual freedom, anti ownership of personal property. A bunch of loony looters, robbing the citizenry blind. But what are we going to do about it. What can we do about it. I wrote an article on my blog site titled, " "Debates & Dear John Letter", offering one solution. Thanks, Anne Cleveland
Published: November 27, 2008 11:28 AM
>>“indicative planning”: use the tax system and the regulatory mechanism to induce the private sector to do what politicians and ideological special interests want. That is not the free market. They will manipulate the markets to bring about the “green” and pro-labor union outcomes that will have nothing to do with the outcomes we as consumers would have desired in a more competitive environment.
Not to mention pushing the Fed to inflate until the Chinese dump all their Treasurys and cause a complete collapse of the dollar.
Here comes the NuNu Deal.
Published: November 27, 2008 3:41 PM
What? and the Republicans are pro-market? You have got to be kidding. The Republicans have looted the treasury, abolished the rule of law, permitted or encouraged torture and comprehensively destroyed the great country that was the US.
Anybody but them!
Published: November 27, 2008 4:21 PM
I would contend that the "great country" has only become incrementally worse since Bush came into power. It was already bad enough.
Published: November 27, 2008 7:12 PM
The only way the Obama team is "pro-market" is that they want to prop up the stock markets with Fed interventions at all costs - and the media goes along with it all saying that "it's the only way out"-they pitch it as pro-market by saying it will "help the markets and spark economic recovery" when it's really Keynesianism at work with the goal to rip us all off.
Published: November 27, 2008 9:29 PM
And the team before was pro-market? What is the result of this?
Published: June 19, 2009 5:45 AM