KeithHennessey.com

This is the second in a series of occasional posts about the nitty gritty of working in the West Wing of the White House.  I am describing things as they were in the Bush Administration.  YMMV in the Obama Administration.  Again, it seems a bit silly to write about such trivial details, but given the [...]

Many of you are new to this blog since I wrote extensively about autos six weeks ago.  As background, I coordinated the auto loan process for President Bush last fall as the Director of the White House National Economic Council (the position now held by Dr. Lawrence Summers).  I wrote a series of posts on [...]

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _______________________________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 1, 2009 BACKGROUND BRIEFING BY SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS ON THE GENERAL MOTORS RESTRUCTURING May 31, 2009 Via Conference Call 7:10 P.M. EDT MS. PSAKI:  Thank you, everyone, for joining the call.  Just a reminder that the call this evening is on background, [...]

As I explained yesterday in part 4 of this series, the President delivered different substantive messages to General Motors and Chrysler.  I would like now to focus on one element of that message, because there’s an enormous hole in yesterday’s announcement, and it appears that the press missed it.  It appears that the Administration did [...]

Q:  This blog launched in late March of 2009, and yet there are more than 40 posts dated in 2007 and 2008.  Why? A:  While working for President Bush, I had a mailing list titled White House Economics, which I used to explain the President’s economic policies.  This blog and the associated mailing list are [...]

The President spoke this afternoon about high food prices and food aid.  If you’d like more detail, here’s our “fact sheet”.  And if you really want to dive down deep, here is a transcript of a press briefing done by three senior administration officials after the announcement:  OMB Deputy Director Steve McMillin, CEA Chairman Ed [...]

This is part two (of two) of your crash course on problems and solutions in the mortgage markets.  Here’s part one.  There is also a great op-ed on the financial market impacts of these mortgage market problems.  It ran in today’s Financial Times, and was coauthored by two Administration officials:  Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs [...]