Krugman: White House Excluding "Progressive-Economist Wing"

Beacool

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Sun Jul-19-09 04:10 PM
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Krugman: White House Excluding "Progressive-Economist Wing"

Edited on Sun Jul-19-09 04:33 PM by Beacool

The Huffington Post
Rachel Weiner
07-19-09

Newsweek's Michael Hirsch profiled Joseph Stiglitz for next week's magazine, asking why a world-renowned economist who predicted the financial crisis has been left out of the administration.

While he may be a Nobel laureate, in Washington he's seen as just another economic critic--and not always a welcome one. Few Americans recognize his name, and fewer still would recognize the man, who is short and stocky and bears a faint resemblance to Mel Brooks. Yet Stiglitz's work is cited by more economists than anyone else's in the world, according to data compiled by the University of Connecticut. And when he goes abroad--to Europe, Asia, and Latin America--he is received like a superstar, a modern-day oracle. <...>

While he had no great desire to go back into government, friends say he was deeply disappointed when an offer didn't come from Obama last fall. Not surprisingly, Stiglitz believes his old rival was behind it, though Summers denies this.

In a blog post Sunday morning, Paul Krugman said Hirsch "somewhat misses the point." It's not that Stiglitz is being excluded because of his criticism and his tendentious relationship with some Obama officials, Krugman says. Rather, an entire economic perspective is lacking in the White House.

The larger story is the absence of a progressive-economist wing. A lot of people supported Obama over Clinton in the primaries because they thought Clinton would bring back the Rubin team; and what Obama has done is ... bring back the Rubin team.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/krugman-white-house-exclu_n_240032.html

Here's the Newsweek article:

The Most Misunderstood Man in America
Joseph Stiglitz predicted the global financial meltdown. So why can't he get any respect here at home?

Anya Stiglitz was in the middle of a Pilates class in Central Park on an April morning when her cell phone rang. Glancing down, she saw "202" pop up�no number attached�and knew it was the White House. An aide to Larry Summers was on the line, looking for her husband, the Nobel Prize�winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Anya said she'd pass on the message to Joe�then went back to work on her abs. No big deal, she thought. People often call her when they want to talk to Joe, because even though he's spent four decades figuring out how the global economy works, he hasn't quite gotten the hang of voice mail. "He doesn't listen to his messages, so if you want to talk to him, keep calling," Anya says on his cell-phone recording.

Anya figured Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser, was probably just calling to gripe about Joe's latest op-ed in The New York Times. Joe Stiglitz and Larry Summers, two towering intellects with egos to match, are not each other's favorite economist. "They respect each other, but they hate each other like poison," says Bruce Greenwald, Stiglitz's friend and academic collaborator at Columbia. ("I've got huge admiration for Joe as an economic thinker," Summers told NEWSWEEK.) Stiglitz had been hammering at Obama's economic team for its handling of the financial crisis. He wrote that the stimulus program was too small to be effective�a criticism that has since swelled into a chorus, though Obama says he's not adding more money. Stiglitz also had called the administration's bailout plan a giveaway to Wall Street, an "ersatz capitalism" that would save the banks' investors and creditors and screw the taxpayers. "I thought, Larry�he's just going to yell at Joe," Anya recalls.

But Summers's aide soon called back, and this time he said it was urgent: could Professor Stiglitz come to Washington for a dinner hosted by the president�that same night? Anya patched him through to Joe's office at Columbia University; Stiglitz accepted, and jumped on an early train. He was a little miffed: the other eminent economists attending the dinner, like Princeton's Alan Blinder and Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff, had been invited the week before. Stiglitz, a former chairman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, had supported Barack Obama as a candidate as early as 2007. But until that day, four months into the administration, he had heard barely a word from the White House. Even now, when the president was making an effort to hear a range of economic voices, Stiglitz seemed to be an afterthought. (A White House spokesman said only that the president wished to include Stiglitz.)

http://www.newsweek.com/id/207390?from=rss