Furmanology

by Will Wilkinson on June 10, 2008

Chris Hayes quoting Steve Clemons on Obama’s appointment of Jason Furman to head his economic team:

But calling a spade a spade, it’s clear that Furman is no Dean Baker or Robert Blecker or Jared Bernstein—all important economists who have been far more right as of late than the Rubin crowd in anticipating the stress points in globalization, the housing bubble, trade, and the like.

Good point! Would it be asking too much for the Obama campaign to bring someone on board its paid economic policy team that brings with them an unabashed left-liberal perspective?

Probably. What’s the function of economic policy advisors in a campaign? To signal (largely to highly informed elites) what kind of policies we might expect from the candidate. So, which people are more important for Obama to signal to: left-liberal Democratic Party stalwarts or moderates with money who might seriously entertain voting for McCain if his economic policy seems considerably more friendly. Seems pretty obvious. Furman is an assurance of centrist reasonableness while relative extremists like Baker and Berstein will either turn people off considering Obama (like me!) or signal to people already deep in the tank for Obama (like Chris, I’d guess).

For an up close and personal taste of Jason Furman’s thinking not only about economic policy, but the deeper philosophical questions behind it, check out his comments on Danny Shapiro’s Is the Welfare State Justified? at this Cato book forum I moderated last October.

Viewing 3 Comments

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    Can we really assume that Obama is signaling his secret inclinations? Perhaps he is merely pandering to highly informed, wealthy people (for their votes and delicious money) , but his actual inclinations are leftwing/populist.

    I really have no idea what Obama's genuine inclinations are, Obama himself says he functions as a Rorschach test, people project what they want to see onto him.

    Maybe thats why so many youngish libertarians think he's a closet market guy.
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    I think the one area where Obama has clearly indicated his "secret inclinations" is with his ecoomic team. Remember that his key economic adviser is Austan Goolsbee, who as David Friedman has pointed out, is an unabashed pro-market economist who just happens to be a Democrat.

    I think an interesting sub-text of the Democratic primary was how Obama was able to get away with openly associating with a center-right economic policy team without getting called out by more partisan liberals (ok, so he got no love from Krugman). He did almost get into trouble with Goolsbee and the whole Canada-NAFTA flap but they just hod from view until the primary was over and promptly trotted him out again...

    Of course all this may be political "signalling"....
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    I'm with Afro. (That sounds funny.)

    I'd think that Obama's overheard mumbling about poor, uneducated people disliking trade is another clue to his essentially upper class (relatively trade friendly) economic inclinations.

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