Welcome!
27 March
Welcome to my new blog. If you would like to learn more about American economic policy, I would be honored to be your guide. I will do my best to explain the options faced by senior American economic policymakers, and to analyze the choices they make.
I anticipate defining “economic policy” broadly as we did at the White House, to include not just the macroeconomy, but also financial market issues, tax policy, energy and climate change, health care, trade and international finance, Social Security and Medicare reform, housing, transportation, pensions, technology and telecommunications, and agriculture policy.
I’m kicking this off with a surge of initial posts on a range of topics, featured in the photo gallery to your right. Click on any photo to go directly to that post. Some are easy, others are a bit more challenging (TARP Math).
This is a successor to my White House Economics mailing list that I had while serving as an advisor to President George W. Bush. You can get updates either through a mailing list or an RSS feed, both of which you can find in the sidebar to the right. If you were a subscriber to White House Economics, please re-subscribe, as this is technically a new list.
I should caution you: the posts here are longer than on other blogs. Economic policymaking can be complex, and is not easily summarized in an 150-word post. I hope you will find that it’s worth your effort.
Please leave comments, and please forgive (and tell me about) any technical glitches. I’m new to blogging.
Thank you for visiting. I hope you will bookmark this site, subscribe to the mailing list or feed, and tell your friends!
Related Posts
(best matches are listed first)- About
- The transition, my new role, and the mailing list archive
- Understanding the GM bankruptcy
- Welcome, Instapundit, Wall Street Journal, Greg Mankiw, and National Review readers!
- A quick guide to the G-20 summit
- Economic highlights of the State of the Union address
- On air
- President Bush’s trip to Europe
Congratulations to Keith on the launch of a new blog that I predict will quickly become a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in economic policy. I can assure readers from my first-hand experience working with Keith that there is simply no one on the planet with a greater combination of depth and breadth when it comes to economic policymaking, and certainly no one who can analyze and explain the issues in a clearer and more accessible way. Keep them coming, Keith.
OK. I'm curious … For a European everything with the Great Decider G.W.B label smells toxic
I'm especially curious to hear your story whether the Geithner plan is simply a huge transfer of wealth from main street to wall street or a serious effort to clean up the mess? And as a Republican advisor your can for sure answer me two simple questions I've about the US politicians: (1) What problems do they have with temporarily nationalizing the banks? (2) What fuss do they make about the word "welfare" while people are moving to shantytowns all over the place? Good luck with your blog!
I am an economics student at South Florida and i look forward to following your blog
I'm an economics major at Baylor University. I currently read Mankiw's Blog on almost a daily basis and welcome a different perspective on the American and global economies.
Congratulations on the new blog! Very timely! Looking forward to lively and informative commentary.
Keith,
Looks good on my iPhone. Subcribed to your RSS feed in Google Reader.
BTW, your friend Dick Armey rocked the Pa. Leadership Conference.
Scott Ott, editor, ScrappleFace.com
Columnist Washington DC Examiner
Candidate, Lehigh County Executive
Boy am I delighted. I relied on your advice and analysis for all the years I was Majority Leader of the U. S. House. I have missed it since you went to the White House and so look forward to reading your blog. I might add that I am a pretty good judge of this stuff since I have my own PHD in Economics. Your work is as good as it gets.
Thanks for including me.
Since you were recommended by a conservative website, and, no disrespect, but I've never heard of you, could you say what school(s) of economics you subscribe to? Are you an Austrian schooler? A Friedmanite Chicago schooler? It would save my time when choosing whether to include another econ. blog to the many I follow in these freaky times. Thanks. Best of luck…
I'm very excited that you will be blogging, as usually I only get to hear second-hand your opinion on economic matters. I am no academic in this field (have a completely unrelated Linguistics degree) but I find the topics to be very interesting (guess most would call me a big dork). I look forward to hearing what you have to say about the current and future state of the economy.
Good luck!
Wow. Cool skis on your site.
The Geithner play is serious and deserves to be treated with respect. We have no alternative but to recapitalize the banking system with taxpayer funds, at least temporarily. The Obama team is doing that in a different manner than we were, and I have not yet reached any conclusions about the new plan. But it's clearly a serious attempt to solve the problem. And since they're the ones making the decisions now, we need their plan, or some modified version of it, to work.
I won't even try to answer for "US politicians," and your welfare question is beyond my scope, but I'll try on the nationalization question. Temporary policies in Washington tend to have a habit of becoming permanent ones. Witness TRIA, the Terrorism Reinsurance Act, which was a two-year program we created in 2002 to restart the property and casualty reinsurance market after it shut down post-9/11. It's still in place, and is well on its way to becoming a permanent implicit taxpayer subsidy of this industry.
We're in a tough spot right now, because we've got privately owned and run banks getting huge taxpayer investments, and that can only lead to conflicts like the AIG/bonus issue. I don't know, however, that putting government employees in charge will help the situation.
Thanks for dropping by. I think you're my first guest from outside of North America.