Obama's "right-of-Clinton" economic team

Blue Oregon's Kari Chisholm reviews Barack Obama's announcement of his economic team and concludes, "So far, so good."

Not so fast.  The announced team has Steve Novick, my candidate for the Oregon U.S. Senate Democratic nomination, worried:

"Romer [Christina Romer, Obama's choice for Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors] has written a paper on tax policy that claims that tax increases (except for deficit reduction) are terrible for the economy - hard to reconcile with the strong economic records of many higher-tax European countries. Geithner has worked with Paulson to craft the ongoing bailout. So far the economic team is to the right of Clinton's. I am worried."

Novick is a smart guy.  If he's worried, then so am I.  All the Obama backers who voted for change should be skittish as well. 

The judgment from the left has been that Obama's cabinet appointees are Clintonesque. Novick is the first to suggest that, in truth, the economic team is ideologically to the "right" of Clintonesque.

And now it's come out that Obama may be rethinking, or "delaying", his tax increases on the wealthy.  Those, as you recall, were to supposed to fund his tax cuts for the rest of us.

Then there's the influence of "Rubinomics", defined by the New York Times as "balanced budgets, free trade and financial deregulation".  Three of Obama's top economic team choices are "acolytes" of Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin. 

Let me get this straight:  Didn't Obama run as a champion of "re-regulation" of the financial markets?  Why then the embrace of the man who almost single-handedly created investment-commercial bank hybrids?  You know, those multi-headed institutions that almost destroyed Wall Street and the American economy, and then, in turn, were canniballzed themselves. 

Who knows?  With the return of Rubinomics in combination with the taxpayer bailout of Wall Street, perhaps we'll see the resurrection of what the now defunct Glass Steagall Act had once prohibited. 

Call it the revivication of mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, or The Monsters that Ate Wall Street.

Comments

[Harry Kershner]

I share Novick's concerns.

David Sirota (Ghettoization & The Difference Between Politics & Policy) says, "...it is notable that Obama's policy appointments ...are almost all right-of-center, Establishment choices - and almost none are...movement progressives. At the same time, many Obama appointments to exclusively political positions –that is, positions that are focused on selling policy, whatever that policy may be - are terrific movement progressives..."

In other words, Obama is taking essentially right-of-center, right-of-Clinton policy and packaging it in "progressive" terms, just as he did in his campaign.

Too bad Novick decided not to support a progressive for president, as he did in '96.