Tag: christina romer

#rsrh I’m glad that Christina Romer can see the humor…

…in our current debt downgrade situation:

Christina Romer, the former chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers on Friday offered a rather strong opinion concerning the announcement by Standard & Poor’s that the credit rating agency downgraded America’s debt to AA+.

Appearing on HBO’s “Real Time,” Romer said we’re “pretty darn f–ked”…

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never heard that particular word before. Or that I have not used that particular word, either.  I have.  Often.  Loudly.  Emphatically.  Sometimes even gratuitously. Ms. Romer even used it in context, although ‘in context’ in this case means ‘on the site of what is by all accounts a metaphorical and bacteriological cesspool.’  But I am forced to remind Ms. Romer that one major reason why we’re in the mess that we’re in right now is specifically because of her incompetence as President Obama’s chief economist.  As has been pointed out many, many times: the report that Romer and the rest of her eased-out-the-door staff put together used the argument that if the proposed stimulus passed, unemployment would cap at 8%; and if it failed to pass, unemployment would hit 9%.  So, having sold the argument, the Obama administration took almost a trillion dollars that we didn’t actually really have and spent it… Continue reading #rsrh I’m glad that Christina Romer can see the humor…

The Infamous, Updated, Romer-Bernstein Chart.

Via James Pethokoukis comes an updated version of the graph (originally created by Obama’s economic advisers Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein) that has been succinctly countering (for years) any and all attempts to argue that the misnamed ‘stimulus’ worked:

For those without access to the picture: it’s a modified version of this graph, which was used to sell the idea that with a stimulus, unemployment would not rise above 8%; and that without a stimulus, unemployment might rise all the way to… 9%!!!!!! That last sentence is what usually gets emphasized in these discussions, and for good reason (it was a nitwit prediction).  But I’d [like] to note that according to the original chart we were forecast to be having about 6.5% or so unemployment at this point, with that number dropping rapidly.  For that matter, I’d also like to note that neither Romer nor Bernstein are currently employed by the Obama administration; they were more or less booted as quietly as could be managed, once the magnitude of the stimulus disaster was fully grasped by the White House.

Alas, the damage has been done.

Moe Lane (crosspost)