Are We In a Recession or Not? by Matt Taibbi

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/189336/83512


“Everyone agrees that the recession is over.” - Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council

“Of course not.” - Outgoing Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer, when asked if the recession was over.

The two senior White House economic advisers made their comments on the same day.

It’s getting harder and harder to read the tea leaves with regard to Barack Obama’s economic team, which in recent weeks has seen two fairly major resignations – the above-quoted Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Romer, and budget director Pete Orszag, two very different people with different views on the economy.

Romer is a former Berkeley professor who was brought into the White House for two reasons; one, she was an expert on the Great Depression, which was looking extremely relevant at the time of Obama’s election, and two, she lacks a Y chromosome, which was reportedly the problem with Chicago professor and onetime close Obama confidante Austan Goolsbee, the original favorite for the CEA job. Orszag meanwhile is a Bob Rubin disciple, a former head of Rubin’s Hamilton Project think tank who often captained the deficit-reduction effort within the Obama White House.

One thing both of these people had in common was that neither of them got along with Larry Summers. In Orszag’s case this reportedly was a personal thing, while in Romer’s case it was more political, although her lack of a Y chromosome may also have played a role (Summers’s famous dictum that “women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of math and science” is looming large now that Larry Fishface seems to have squeezed out one of the highest-ranking women in the Obama White House).

Most of the DC chatter class seems to have interpreted the dual resignations as a sign of the ascendant power of the Summers-Geithner axis within the Obama White House. This is a variation of the same theme that I kept hearing when I was in Washington last month covering the Dodd-Frank bill; that while the Geithner/Summers/Rubin clan briefly fell out of sight after Scott Brown’s big win last winter, and relative liberals like Paul Volcker and Romer briefly got more room to push their views with Obama, that situation had reversed itself by late spring and Geithner/Summers once again had the presidential ear on economic matters more or less exclusively.


More at the link ---

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[Skittles]

2. THE RECESSION IS OVER! AND THE OIL HAS EVAPORATED!

this White House thinks we are all as stupid as teabaggers

[ixion]

4. Indeed... it was insulting enough to have to put up with it under Bush

but the fact that I voted for Obama and that he is acting in such a way is beyond disappointing.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

5. We're saved!!

:banghead:

[leftstreet]

3. K&R

Definitely worth reading

Thanks for posting!

[inna]

6. K&R. Considering that there was a NET LOSS of 350,000 jobs in the last two months...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8893066

[guardian]

7. It's so insulting

Every time I hear one of these pols or talking heads say the "recession is over" I just want to puke. I guess things are great when you are riding around in limos, eating at Tavern on the Green, and getting your weekly Champagne & Rose Facial at Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa, and sleeping in your gated community.

NONE of these people has a clue as to what life is like for 95% of the population.