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  • Christina Romer may not be Harvard material, but she suits Obama

    Harvard’s loss may be Barack Obama’s gain.

    Obama Tuesday picked Christina D. Romer, currently a member of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley, to be the head of the Council of Economic Advisers in his administration.

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    She’ll be part of the team that includes Timothy F. Geithner, the incoming treasury secretary, and Lawrence H. Summers, who will be the chairman of the National Economic Council.

    The selection of Romer comes a few months after Harvard President Drew G. Faust turned down an economics department recommendation that Romer be offered a tenured position at Harvard.

    At the same time, Faust gave her approval to the offer of a tenured position at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to Romer’s husband, David H. Romer.

    David Romer, who is also a professor of economics at Berkeley, turned down the Harvard offer, and the couple remained at Berkeley.

    Faust did not comment on her decision to reject Christina Romer’s appointment, a decision that was met with disappointment at Harvard and relief at Berkeley, according to the Harvard Crimson.

    “I have great admiration for Christy Romer as a teacher and a scholar, and I was looking forward to having her as a colleague,” N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard professor of economics who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005, told the Crimson.

    Her Berkeley connection may have been a factor in Romer’s selection to Obama’s economic team.

    Two of her faculty colleagues, Laura D’Andrea Tyson and Robert B. Reich, have been part of Obama’s transition team.

    Tyson chaired the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration and Reich was secretary of labor.

    Christina Romer, 49, is an expert on the Great Depression and monetary policy. She has published a wide variety of articles, often working with her husband.

    Both Romers are members of the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Among other things, the group determines when the country is in a recession.

    The Wall Street Journal Tuesday wrote that Christina Romer will “face a tough challenge” wielding influence at the White House.

    “With big guns and players like Summers and Geithner, she’ll have to learn to get sharp elbows,” said Gerald J. Driscoll, former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

    Barry Eichengreen, a colleague of Romer’s at Berkeley, said that Romer will do fine making herself heard.

    “There will be a lot of loud voices in the room where the Obama economic policies are hammered out,” he told the Journal. “Chris can hold up her end in that kind of situation.”

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    • Small donors played comparable roles in Obama and Bush campaigns

      November 30, 2008 at 7:28am

      A new study by the Campaign Finance Institute shows that Barack Obama received about the same percentage from small donors in 2008 as George W. Bush did in 2004.

    • Brent Scowcroft is Back in the Tent

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    • House Panel to Probe What Triggered Spitzer Inquiry

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    • Social Secretary Desiree Rogers is decades-old Obama pal

      It is testament to her close relationship to Barack and Michelle Obama – and to members of their inner circle – that Desiree Rogers threw an intimate birthday party for her friend, Valerie Jarrett, last week. Among the guests were the president-elect and his wife.

      “She has extraordinary flair and exquisite taste,” Jarrett, co-chairman of Obama’s transition team, told the Washington Post. “My party was perfect – she had my favorite food, my favorite flowers.”

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      The prominent businesswoman and Harvard MBA, who cuts a glamorous profile at Chicago’s A-list social events, was a natural choice for White House social secretary. A major fund-raiser for Obama’s presidential campaign, she is smart, well-connected and exquisitely attuned to details, say friends.

      And she has been a close friend of the Obamas for decades. Rogers was once married to John W. Rogers Jr., another old pal of the Obamas, who played basketball with Michelle Obama’s brother Craig Robinson at Princeton. John Rogers, the founder of Ariel Capital Management and also a major Obama fund-raiser, is co-chairman of the president-elect’s inaugural committee.

      “This appointment sends a strong message that the Obamas want to use the White House strategically . . . [to] open it to a broader range of people,” Jarrett said.

      “Desiree is a heavy hitter – she comes with her own range of contacts from around the country. She’s close to Michelle and she knows everyone who will be working in the West Wing, so she will be able to create a synergy.”

      The Post notes that the position of social secretary is more influential than commonly realized. Best known for staging state dinners, the social secretary is also responsible for every event or ceremony that occurs in the White House or on the grounds.

      The day after the inauguration, for example, Rogers will be responsible for organizing the swearing-in of the Cabinet.

      Ann Stock, a social secretary in the Clinton White House, was once charged with pulling together the signing of the historic Mideast peace agreement in four days, for 4,000 guests.

      “It’s like running a small agency,” said Stock, who briefed Rogers on the job last week. “Her business savvy, her marketing skills will all come into play. Her close relationship with the Obamas is very important because she comes to the job already understanding their preferences.”

      Rogers, 49, will come to the White House from Allstate Financial, where she was hired to create a social network of consumers and clients.

      Prior to that, she was president of Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas, a $2-billion utility which she had headed since 2004. She worked at the company starting in 1997 as its chief marketing officer.

      Besides serving on business boards like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, Rogers is vice chairman of the board for both Lincoln Park Zoo and the Museum of Science and Industry, and is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

      Perhaps her most important qualification for the job of White House social secretary, Jarrett said, is that she understands the Obamas’ desire to bring in all sorts of people, “so it’s the people’s house again.”

      “This campaign engaged a lot of people in ways they had not engaged before,” Jarrett said. “This is about continuing to capture that excitement.”

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      • Small donors played comparable roles in Obama and Bush campaigns

        November 30, 2008 at 7:28am

        A new study by the Campaign Finance Institute shows that Barack Obama received about the same percentage from small donors in 2008 as George W. Bush did in 2004.

      • Robert Rubin’s disciples dominate Obama economic team

        No team of rivals, this.

        If anything, Barack Obama’s economic team is stunning for its homogeneity. Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers and Peter Orszag are all proteges of former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, a centrist economist who was one of the key Democratic architects of the financial deregulation undertaken in the Clinton years.

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        Other Rubin proteges are sprinkled through the president-elect’s economic advisory team, including Michael Froman, his chief of staff at Treasury who followed him to Citigroup, Jason Furman, an economist at the Brookings Institution, and also, James P. Rubin, the former secretary’s son.

        Liberal economist Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, expresses bafflement at Obama’s decision to pack his team with disciples of Rubin, an advocate of balanced budgets, free trade and financial deregulation – especially given Rubin’s central role at Citigroup, now on the brink of financial disaster.

        “What kind of magic does this man Rubin have?” Kuttner asked in a recent Huffington Post column:

        He was one of the key Democratic architects of the extreme financial deregulation that brought the economy to this pass. At Citi, he was one of the grand strategists of the speculation in securitized loans and off-balance-sheet gimmicks that has brought Citi to the edge of bankruptcy. Yet he continues to fall upwards. Surely Barack Obama must have noticed that Rubin is a false prophet. So why is his entire senior economic group a Team of Rubinistas?

        . . .In fairness, adults are not merely tools of their patrons. In recent months, Larry Summers has disagreed with Rubin on the scale of the needed stimulus. Tim Geithner is for far more regulation than Rubin. Jason Furman, though suggested by Rubin for his campaign post of economic policy director, actually spent more of his career working for Joseph Stiglitz than for Robert Rubin. Peter Orszag has done a fine job as director of the Congressional Budget Office, and is not averse to large scale public spending.

        Kuttner urges Obama to pick at least one senior economic adviser from outside Rubin’s centrist circle who would reflect the more muscular view of the government’s role favored by liberals.

        But New York Times columnist David Leonhardt suggests the old, ideological battles of the Clinton years – known as the “Battle of the Bobs, Rubin versus Reich” – are now irrelevant.

        Explaining the old divide, Leonhardt wrote: “On one side was Clinton’s labor secretary and longtime friend, who argued that the government should invest in roads, bridges, worker training and the like to stimulate the economy and help the middle class. On the other side was Bob Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive turned White House aide, who favored reducing the deficit to soothe the bond market, bring down interest rates and get the economy moving again.”

        But today, against the backdrop of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, Leonhardt suggests the “Battle of the Bobs” has given way to a consensus on the need for a vigorous government intervention in the economy.

        Certainly, Geithner is on record in support of regulating financial instruments and Obama himself has pledged to ushering in a period of re-regulation.

        Both the president-elect and his team have also agreed on a massive stimulus plan that if passed by Congress would pump hundreds of billions into an economic jumpstart – hardly Rubin’s old recipe of balanced budgets, deficit reduction and deregulation.

        “Everyone recognizes that we’re looking at deficits of considerable magnitude,” liberal economist Jared Bernstein told the New York Times. “Whether it’s Bob Rubin, Larry Summers or the most conservative economist, that’s a widely shared recognition.”

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        • College presidents may be wearing too many hats

          January 30, 2009 at 9:42am

          Should university presidents sit on corporate boards? Sen. Chuck Grassley doesn’t think so.

        • Waxman’s coup likely to boost Obama energy agenda

          He has been called the “scariest guy in town” and the Democrats’ Eliot Ness.

          Rep. Henry Waxman, the 69-year-old Californian who wrested control of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee from Congress’ longest-serving chairman yesterday, is expected to usher in far more activist approach to global warming and energy independence than his predecessor, Michigan Rep. John Dingell.

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          And with his longtime chief of staff Phil Schiliro just tapped by President-elect Barack Obama as his liaison with Congress, Waxman is likely to work closely with the new administration, speeding passage of Obama’s health and energy agenda, which includes spending $150 billion on renewable fuel research and one million new hybrid cars.

          “We are at a unique moment in history,” Waxman told reporters after the secret-ballot vote. “Seniority is important, but it should not be a grant of property rights to be chairman for three decades or more.”

          Waxman developed a reputation as a tough and tenacious inquisitor as chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where he churned out an endless series of reports on issues ranging from Halliburton’s excessive billing on contracts in Iraq to the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only education programs.

          Though he represents one of the most liberal and affluent districts in Congress – an area that includes Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Santa Monica – there is nothing slick about the man.

          He grew up in an apartment over a Watts grocery store owned by his father, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. After a stint in the California assembly, he came to Congress as part of the group of post-Watergate reformers known as the Class of 1974.

          “Doing reports, conducting oversight – it’s what he has always done,” Schiliro told the Nation.

          Although both Dingell and Waxman support universal health care, they have fought over the best methods of curbing global warming.

          Dingell, 82, has worked on some environmental legislation, helping pass the Clean Air Act of 1990 and the raising of fuel-efficiency standards on the auto industry last year. But he has resisted previous efforts to raise fuel-efficiency standards, and environmentalists view him as an impediment.

          House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was officially neutral in the Waxman-Dingell contest, circumvented Dingell last year by creating a temporary global warming committee chaired by Rep. Edward J. Markey of MA., a close ally.

          While Dingell’s biggest contributors have been Detroit’s automakers and telecommunications giants – hardly surprising for a Michigan lawmaker and commerce chairman – Waxman’s are health-care players and unions.

          The Center for Responsive Politics lists Dingell’s top donors as General Motors, Ford, BellSouth and DaimlerChrysler, AT&T and Comcast, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

          Waxman’s biggest contributors are the American Association for Justice, a lawyers’ trade group, the National Association of Letter Carriers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Hospital Association, the Service Employees International Union and the American Medical Association, according to the watchdog group.

          The leadership change is a blow to the already-reeling auto industry, another confirmation of their diminished power on Capitol Hill. Republicans, meanwhile, expressed concern that the Democratic party is shifting leftward.

          “This decision sends a troubling signal from a Majority that has promised to govern from the center,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement. “They moved away from Chairman Dingell because he is committed to approaching energy and environmental issues in a manner that protects American jobs.”

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          • New owners take charge of Houston Astros

            November 23, 2011 at 7:38am

            After a long vetting process by Major League Baseball, ownership of the Houston Astros passed Tuesday to businessman Jim Crane and his partners.

          • Penny Pritzker says no thanks to Commerce post

            Penny Pritzker, the billionaire heiress who oversaw Barack Obama’s record-breaking fund-raising efforts, has taken herself out of the mix for U.S. Commerce Secretary.

            “Penny Pritzker ultimately has decided she does not want to do the Commerce thing,” the Chicago Tribune’s Swamp quotes a senior Obama official.

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            Pritzker is already part of the Obama Biden economic transition team. But sources said it would have been exceedingly difficult for her to disentangle from her family’s far-flung business empire to fulfill the president-elect’s ethics requirements for members of his administration.

            The 49-year-old Harvard- and Stanford-educated lawyer and businesswoman, whose net worth was estimated at $2.8 billion last year, is one of a trio of Pritzkers who run a sprawling family empire that includes the Hyatt hotel chain.

            Pritzker first met the Obamas in the late 1990s when her son and daughter played in a summer basketball league at a Chicago YMCA coached by Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama’s brother, who introduced them.

            Another key link was Obama’s longtime friend Martin Nesbitt, a vice president of the Pritzker Realty group, who approached her about getting involved in Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, where she also would serve as finance chairman then.

            A Pritzker appointment would certainly have not broken the “business as usual” mold that Obama has campaigned against. On the other hand, many commerce secretaries have been major donors of the presidents who appoint them.

            Pritzker also would have brought baggage as the former chairwoman of Chicago’s Superior Bank, which failed in 2001 after making large amounts of sub-prime loans. While she stepped down as chairwoman in 1994, she remained on the board of the bank’s holding company.

            The Chicago-Sun Times reported in April that it had obtained a letter showing that until Superior’s end, Pritzker made efforts to try to revive the bank with an expanded push into subprime loans. Pritzker’s attorney Kevin Poorman said that the kind of subprime lending that Superior was doing in 2001 was not predatory.

            Update: Chicago Sun Times columnist Lynn Sweet posts an email from Pritzker herself saying she is not a candidate for the Commerce post. “I think I can best serve our nation in my current capacity: building businesses, creating jobs and working to strengthen our economy,” Pritzker said.

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            • Sibling rivalries in national politics

              May 21, 2010 at 7:30am

              Not since 1968 have brothers stood against one another for such a powerful political position.

            • Newt Gingrich’s stock rises as GOP scrambles

              Out of the ashes of the Republican Party an old GOP warrior may be rising.

              Or at least that’s the story being pushed by boosters of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who see him as a potential savior of a battle-scarred party.

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              A chief architect of the 1994 Contract with America, the onetime Georgia congressman drove the Republican Party’s dramatic success in the 1994 elections when the GOP took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. In 1995, Time magazine named him Person of the Year for his leadership of that short-lived revolution.

              But Gingrich resigned in 1998 in the face of GOP midterm losses and mounting ethics questions – among them, an income-tax probe and whispers that he helped lead the attack against Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair while having an extramarital relationship himself.

              In the decade since leaving Congress, Gingrich has remained a mainstay of conservative politics, aligning himself with leading conservative think tanks and writing several books.

              And at least some in the party’s conservative wing are convinced he is the man to shepherd his party to leadership once again. They say he is an endless fount of ideas and a bulldog of a competitor. Columnist Robert Novak goes so far as to suggest him as a contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination:

              In serious conversations among Republicans since their election debacle Tuesday, what name is mentioned most often as the Moses, or Reagan, who could lead them out of the wilderness before 40 years?

              To the consternation of many Republicans, it is none other than Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

              Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012, but there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.

              Gingrich himself appears to be doing everything he can to encourage such talk.

              After deciding to sit out the Republican presidential primaries last year, purportedly because he wanted to devote himself to his new think tank, American Solutions, he told Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin: “Make a note now. Call me the day after the 2008 election.”

              And as Republicans cast about for someone to lead them out of the post-election wilderness, he has been a relentlessly upbeat presence on the political circuit, positioning himself as party guru, if not a candidate.

              As he told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation last Sunday: “I’ve been through the ‘64 collapse when the Republican Party was going to disappear, and the ‘74 Watergate collapse when the Republican Party was going to disappear, and the ‘92 defeat of President Bush.

              “And in each case, I watched us within a short time focus on new ideas and new solutions, and within a very short time come back as a stronger and healthier party.”

              But rehabilitating oneself as a candidate, as opposed to a talking head, may be a tough sell.

              A longtime crusader for traditional family values, Gingrich is now on his third marriage, and his infidelities have been vividly chronicled by the media, for instance in Gail Sheehy’s 1995 Vanity Fair profile.

              Also damaging were the widespread reports about how he confronted his first wife, Jackie, in a hospital room in 1980 where she was recovering from uterine cancer surgery, to hammer out the terms of a divorce.

              Even Novak acknowledges concerns about “deep ‘character flaws’ of Gingrich’s that would be difficult to overcome in a presidential campaign.”

              The problem, as Novak sees it, is that nobody else in the GOP firmament has what he calls Gingrich’s “dynamism”:

              “What is certain is that Gingrich has the desire and the will. He has a deep-seated ambition. He had not even settled into the House speaker’s chair in 1995 when he confessed to me his presidential desires for 1996. That was not to be, but he never abandoned the personal dream and is ready to pursue it now.”

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              • #1.   boredwell 11.21.2008

                Apocryphal or not, the sotry goes that Clinton seated Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich in the back of Air FOrce One while flying from DC to Jerusalem to attend Yshak Rabin’s funeral. Dole and Gingrich felt snubbed. Gingrich was infuriated.

                Gingrich led the Republicans not to submit a revised budget, allowing the previously approved appropriations to expire on schedule, and causing parts of the Federal government to shut down for lack of funds. Gingrich inflicted a blow to his public image by seeming to suggest that the Republican hard-line stance over the budget was in due to his “snub” by the President.

                Gingrich’s record has shown him to be a diva and drama queen. He’s intractable and thetorically vitrolic. His vaunted, self-image polishing Contract with America turned out to be braggadocio.

                It just goes to show how backward thinking the broken GOP leadership has become in the wake of its defeat. To resurrect Gingrich illustrates that it can not(refuses?)think outside the box. Piyush (Bobby) Jindal is a better choice though the thinking behind that is warped. If pitting two people of color against one another is the GOP’s idea of “fighting fire with fire” it will fail.

                I hope they do select the former Speaker of the House as their guy. They will surely fail with that intractable man blathering at the GOP’s bully pulpit. Whatever the GOP decides it’s a guarantee that it will harken back to its static ideological belief that there is a big bad bogeyman lurking in every issue nationally and interntaionally. They are not America’s saviors. And I, for one, am sick of them.

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