The whole Tim Geithner/TARP/bailout/etc. thing is over my head, though I'd like you to assume, for the purposes of this diary, that I hold the exact same views as you on the subject.
Now that we've cleared that up ... despite/in addition to Obama's prescience/failure/remains to be seen in terms of his choice for Treasury Secretary, he's made what I think is a good choice for Assistant Treasury Secretary for Economic Policy; yeah, federal office titles are really, really long.
From Reuters:
WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) - Princeton economics professor Alan Krueger won Senate approval late on Wednesday as the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for economic policy, the department said on Thursday.
...
Krueger is responsible for the review and analysis of both domestic and international economic issues and developments in the financial markets, the department said. He was also given the title chief economist of the Treasury Department.
Of course, I may be a bit biased.
Update: Somewhat disturbed by the intelligent SEIU ads that know when labor is mentioned. What if they learn to walk erect?
<begin juicy details about Luntz's life>
See, his wife was my math teacher sophomore year of high school. The course was pre-calculus. (Their family is also members of my synagogue, but that's already too much in that subject area)
Due to a combination of computation errors, rushing, "stupid mistakes," and probably some amount of laziness, I wasn't actually doing so well in that class. Granted, my life kinda started falling apart that year ...
But enough abut me and my dark and mysterious past. The point is, I was on the borderline for being recommended to take AP Calculus BC junior year.
This was highly important. For one, the BC calculus teacher was far, far better than the AB one. He'd even been given the Distinguished Teacher Award from the U.S. Department of Education, after a Presidential Scholar from my high school nominated him. (Incidentally, I was in fact invited to apply to be a Presidential Scholar for my senior year (a perfect SAT score will do that for you), but my life was completely in shambles at that point and I didn't even apply ...)
Anyway, in addition to being a better teacher, BC Calculus covers the first 2 college courses in calculus (in a non-rigorous manner) and obviously looked better on my transcript. Plus, I would've been majorly disappointed.
A long story short, she recommended me for it, and, um, let's see, 6 years later, I'm a double major in mathematics and computer science.
</end juicy details>
So, anyway, Professor Krueger is actually not exclusively a labor economist.
As his bio at Princeton says,
He has published widely on the economics of education, terrorism, labor demand, income distribution, social insurance, labor market regulation and environmental economics.
However, he was Chief Economist at the Labor Department between 1994 and 1995, and has won the IZA Prize in Labor Economics
The prize was for what is perhaps Professor Krueger's may be best known for his book with David Card: Myth and measurement: the new economics of the minimum wage
David Card and Alan B. Krueger have already made national news with their pathbreaking research on the minimum wage. Here they present a powerful new challenge to the conventional view that higher minimum wages reduce jobs for low-wage workers.
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In each case they present a battery of evidence showing that increases in the minimum wage lead to increases in pay, but no loss in jobs.
A distinctive feature of Card and Krueger's research is the use of empirical methods borrowed from the natural sciences, including comparisons between the "treatment" and "control" groups formed when the minimum wage rises for some workers but not for others.
So not only did he find that ol' Milt Friedman wasn't all he was cracked up to be on the minimum wage, but he did it using scientific methods
He urged that the unemployment insurance system be fixed to be made more solvent way back in 2001, "in case of a downturn,"
Employers are assessed a tax on each worker's earnings, up to an annual earnings cap that has not kept up with inflation. The tax rate depends on an employer's past experience with layoffs -- a process known as experience rating -- subject to a minimum and maximum rate.
Largely because of these limits, experience rating is imperfect. The extra tax revenue generated by additional layoffs covers only about two-thirds of the additional cost of providing benefits. In high-layoff sectors like construction, companies pay, on average, less than a third of the extra costs generated by layoffs.
As a consequence, many companies are, in effect, subsidized when they lay off workers. In an era when rapid technological change enables companies to lay off workers and increase profitability, imperfect experience rating is even less defensible.
Of course, we didn't listen ... more recently, he has criticized privatizated job placement services as less effective than public ones.
In his papers, one finds conclusions that school vouchers may have "statistically insignificant" effects,
He even wrote a column in foreign affairs several years ago where he mocked George Bush by titling it "Misunderestimating" Terrorism
Summary: Although terrorism is a top U.S. concern, the State Department's annual terrorism report was riddled with errors. If Washington wants to win the war, it needs to get its facts straight.
Mind you, he's not perfect, and his positing of a 5 percent consumption tax as a "suggestion for serious discussion" to take effect in 2 years as a way to jumpstart the economy may be troubling, though he does at least mention some of the major downsides, "a consumption tax is a greater burden for the poor, who spend a relatively high share of their income. But this can be compensated by exempting essential items, like rent and nutritious, or by providing a rebate to low-income households. "
Still, I'd say a pretty good appointment, and frankly I'm surprised they let him through so easily. I guess he's not nearly as scary as a Big Porno Deputy in the Justice Department.