This economic team has been a disaster from the start, and Larry Summers should be canned, period...Obama needs Krugman and Volcker and a few like-minded economists on his staff, and he needs to get as engaged in understanding economics as he has been in medical care.
Since we started shipping manufacturing jobs overseas in the '90's (for shame, Bill Clinton) each recession has taken longer and longer for employment to recover to its previous peak level. There is a reason for this, and neither Dems nor Republicans will point it out because too many oxen would be gored; we have shipped our manufacturing overseas via NAFTA....whereas manufacturing is always the first place jobs are added in a recovery, after inventory draw-downs are complete. So now, China has almost completely recovered; South Korea has almost completely recovered. We have no way to fuel the recovery. Essentially we have shot ourselves, not only in the foot, but also perilously close to our heart. If our recovery parallels the last two recessions but from a deeper trough, it will be a decade before we recover. For shame Bill Clinton and George Bush!
I was trained as an economist (Oberlin, '61), received an MBA (Northwestern '63), spent 23 years in big business rising to be a CEO, and then spent 25 years as an entrepreneur. It was apparent to me and to many others when Obama took office that his economic team was part of the problem and far too Wall Street-oriented to see the economic problem as it really was shaping up. Thus the politically cowardly and ultimately somewhat ineffectual recovery efforts at a time when imaginative and bold outside-the-box thinking was required.
We will be paying a terrible price for years. Obama needs to learn that being an effective executive means continuing to have independent sources, and a willingness to change players when warranted, rather than rewarding political-corporate game-playing and faux-loyalty.
By Harry Lavo
Holyoke, MA
August 6th, 2010
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com |
