Obama picks Orszag to run budget office
By Jeanne Sahadi
President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday nominated Peter Orszag to head the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is the president’s chief number-crunching department.
As OMB director, Orszag, 40, would prepare the president’s federal budget proposals for Congress and analyze the effectiveness of government programs and policies, as well as have a big role in determining funding priorities for federal dollars.
Orszag has also been a frank voice on the growth in the country’s deficit and the shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare programs.
“The nation is on an unsustainable fiscal course,” Orszag said in September, before the Treasury and Federal Reserve committed over a trillion dollars to stem the credit crisis, at least some of which the government is expected to make back over time.
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You can just see this play out over the next 15-25 years. Stimulus followed by discipline followed by subpar growth, probably 2-3 more full cycles until the chartalist theory is widely accepted.
Guys like Orszag just don’t get it.
probably would much rather live in the world of ‘after they get it’ than now.
Not just Orzag. Caught a local public radio show discussing the fiscal crisis with a couple of university economics profs. I’d have sworn we’re still on the gold standard after hearing their comments.
When they talked about the rest of the world “lending” us money as if we’re some sort of beggar nation, it made me wonder just what it takes to become an econ prof today.
I don’t understand why that mindset is so entrenched in academia.
and they are ‘molding’ our children’s minds…
Seems they sort of half get it sometimes:
Meant to post this:
krugman
response should be posted first thing tomorrow am