One of his best buddies is Steve Levitt. They roomed together. Make of that what you like.
You can take the empiricism/eclecticism in two ways, but for better or worse, he is not invested in long-standing theories, whether good or bad.
He is not driving the train. Larry is.
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Michael Pollak Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 2:12 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] Goolsbee: the source of all tepidity and stupidity?
Yesterday I started really wondering why this stimulus bill falls so short and is so bad. Because I can't believe that all the big econ brains assembled in this administration (Summers, Bernstein, Romer, Bernancke) don't understand this shortfall issue better than we do.
It could all be a deep plan of course. But I can't help feeling that even though there aren't conservative "freshwater" economists in his administration, this plan is splitting the difference between their views and liberal economists. And conservative economists have been abysmal in this debate, with many of even the most respectable and intelligent ones (Mankiw, Barro) saying crazy stupid pre-Keynesian things. (Krugman argues in his blog that they seem to be up against an existential wall, such that if Keynes is right about this output gap stuff, then their lifework has been misguided, a conclusion they are understandably flailing against with all their might and any quarter-assed idea that comes to hand.)
And then I thought: I wonder where Austan Goolsbee stands. He's a freshwater economist. And I wonder if he's still whispering in Obama's ear. Or if Obama's basic principles are the one Goolsbee gave him.
At any rate, I googled his name and stimulus, and here's the first thing that came up, from the WSJ Real Time Economics blog. Oog.
<quote>
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/12/19/experts-weigh-in-on-merits-o f-fiscal-stimulus/
Experts weigh in on the Merits of Fiscal Stimulus
Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago economist, adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama:
If you can move quickly enough, I think tax relief for low/middle income mortgage holders would certainly be in order as a way to lessen the credit crunch damage of the housing market -- the benefits would multiply up because of the leverage in the same way the losses are getting magnified now. If the economy continues to slow and the housing troubles actually morph into a crisis of consumer confidence, then direct tax relief for
middle and working class folks would be the order of the day.
<unquote>
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