Tag Archives: white house

Dr. Goolsbee gets it wrong on the auto loans

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 [...]

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Working in the West Wing: Doing a TV news interview on the North Lawn

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 [...]

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Today’s jobs report

On the first Friday of each month the Labor Department releases the employment report for the prior month.  In the White House we used to call it Jobs Day, and it’s a fairly big deal when the economy is in transition.
Today is Jobs Day.  Here are the two most important facts from the May employment [...]

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Will the stimulus come too late?

I began this blog at the end of March after the stimulus bill had become law.  I had been struck by how much the stimulus debate had focused on whether the bill was efficient.  (It clearly was not.)  There was much less discussion of whether the stimulus would be effective, and of the timing of [...]

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Parsing the President’s health care reform letter

The White House has released a letter from the President to the two Senate Chairmen who are working on (different) versions of health care reform:  Senator Kennedy (D-MA), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.  The letter is dated yesterday and [...]

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Understanding the GM bankruptcy

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 [...]

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The Administration’s background briefing on GM

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, and you can attribute quotes to a senior administration official.  And [...]

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Basic facts on the General Motors bankruptcy

In a few hours I will offer my thoughts and reactions to the General Motors bankruptcy filing and the President’s noon announcement.  For now, here is what I have been able to figure out from the White House fact sheet and secondary source reporting through CNBC and the Wall Street Journal.  I assume that both [...]

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