KeithHennessey.com

The President is scheduled to hold a press conference Wednesday evening at 8 PM EDT. I offer twenty questions about economic policy for consideration by members of the White House press corps. They cover the economy, stimulus, taxes, autos, health care, energy and climate change, and trade.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace moderated a discussion about the auto industry.  One of his guests was Dr. Austan Goolsbee, who is a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
I want to focus on some incorrect and inflammatory statements by [...]

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 President’s Chrysler announcement last Thursday produced mixed results.
The agreement among Chrysler, Fiat, UAW, the Administration, and the large banks appears to increase the probability (from almost zero) that Chrysler will survive for the long run, albeit as a part of Fiat.  This is clearly a good thing. Is it worth the cost to taxpayers [...]

Tuesday I began with a simple example, which I am calling Large Bank.
Yesterday we looked at TARP I, in which the government would buy troubled/toxic assets from banks.
Today I will describe TARP II, the plan we (the Bush Administration) implemented, in which the government made direct equity investments in banks to help fill their capital [...]

Despite Secretary Geithner’s statement to the contrary, I still think the Administration is running out of room within the $700 B Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).  In my last four posts on TARP funding (1 2 3 4), I have stuck to what I think I can demonstrate analytically.  I am now going to shift [...]

Last Friday I raised the question of how much funding is left in the TARP.  This is now a broader discussion involving Secretary Geithner and the Treasury staff, the General Accounting Office, the Wall Street Journal and ABC News.  I’d like to review the progression of this topic over the past six days and see [...]

You’re probably here this morning either because of a link from Instapundit, or from Bill McGurn’s excellent Main Street column in today’s Wall Street Journal, or because of Yuval Levin’s kind reference on The Corner, or from Greg Mankiw over the weekend.  However you may have found me, welcome!
As background, I served as a White [...]

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 [...]

Last Friday I posted that I thought the Administration had less than $40 B of room remaining in the TARP.  The Wall Street Journal reported today Monday that Treasury says “it has about $134.5 billion left in its financial-rescue fund.”  Secretary Geithner addressed this question Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopolous.
GEITHNER: George, we [...]