p.s. Although I am joking of course, somewhere there are thousands of righties, the ones who were screaming "Obama is a socialist" actually thinking along those very same lines.
On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> <http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/16032.html>
>
> Who is Christina Romer?
>
> By LISA LERER | 11/28/08 7:06 AM EST Text Size:
>
> When Barack Obama selected Christina Romer to lead his Council of Economic
> Advisers, the response of many in Washington was "Christina who?"
>
> But in economic circles, Romer was an obvious pick. The University of
> California at Berkeley professor, one of the preeminent macro-economists in
> the country, specializes in the Great Depression. And for a new
> administration poised to inherit the current economic crisis, who better to
> put in office than the expert on what went wrong the last time?
>
> "Right now, you want a business cycle stabilization chair of the Council on
> Economic Advisers and that's Christy," said friend and colleague Brad
> DeLong, an economist at Berkeley.
>
> Romer and her husband, David, both tenured professors at Berkeley, have
> been fixtures in the economic world for years. And when they started
> advising Obama during his campaign, speculation was rampant that a post in
> any new Obama administration would be in store for at least one of them.
>
> Christina Romer, 49, has known several members of Obama's inner circle for
> years. As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
> she was a favorite of a young assistant professor named Lawrence Summers.
> And this week, Obama picked Summers, a former Treasury secretary in the
> Clinton administration, as a top White House economic adviser.
>
> Romer knows Peter Orszag, who will be Obama's White House budget director,
> from his days as an adjunct professor at Berkeley.
>
> Romer shares much of Summer's centrist, pragmatic perspective on economic
> issues.
>
> "They will be natural allies on many issues," said Greg Mankiw, former
> chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.
>
> A close friend of David Romer's from their undergrad years, Mankiw was also
> the best man at the Romers' wedding.
>
> "On nine out of ten issues they would independently come to the same
> conclusion," he said. "And on the other, after they talked it out, they
> would come to same conclusion."
>
> Romer has described herself as having "liberal Obama-heavy political
> views," but her work has drawn support from both parties.
>
> She burst into the economic scene with her doctoral dissertation that
> fundamentally changed how economists viewed the Great Depression.
>
> Economics data indicated that the business cycle before the Great
> Depression was much more volatile than the economy after World War II.
> Economists widely assumed the data demonstrated the success of the
> post-Depression stabilization policies. Romer proved them wrong by showing
> that what seemed like a decrease in market volatility was really due to
> improved data collection.
>
> Since then, she's done extensive work researching the causes of the Great
> Depression and the roles that fiscal and monetary policy played in the
> country's economic recovery. More recently, she has focused on the impact of
> tax policy on economic growth in papers co-authored with her husband.
>
> Her findings have been cheered on both sides of the aisle. In a November
> 2008 paper, the Romers concluded that tax cuts can increase economic output,
> a finding cheered by in low-tax, Republican circles.
>
> The Romers, who live in Oakland, Calif., with the youngest of their three
> children, have long packaged themselves as the dynamic duo of the economics
> world. When they went on the teaching market, they made it clear that the
> universities would have to hire both of them.
>
> They kept that promise even when Harvard University came knocking. The
> Economics Department voted to offer Christiana Romer a job earlier this
> year, while David was slated to take a post at Harvard's Kennedy School of
> Government.
>
> Christina Romer's job was eventually nixed by Harvard President Drew Faust.
> David Romer turned down the job offer and Faust was widely criticized for
> her decision.
>
> The Harvard decision is a typical one, say friends and colleagues, who
> describe Romer as unafraid to take tough stances.
>
> On Wednesday, Romer called DeLong after reading some of her old critiques
> of his papers as part of the administration vetting process.
>
> "God, I was mean," she said, Delong recalled. "When people are wrong she is
> not shy about saying why they're wrong."
>
> She's also able to deal with Summers, who's widely known as a brilliant,
> but sometimes difficult, personality.
>
> "Larry is also a bull in a china shop," said Mankiw. "Christy has more of a
> deft touch. They will be natural allies on many issues."
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