Senator Sherrod Brown: Obama economic team has 'turned a corner'

[jefferson_dem]

Brown: Obama economic team has 'turned a corner'
By Jordan Fabian - 11/22/09 11:46 AM ET

After coming under fire for advancing policies some say do not do enough to help the middle-class, President Barack Obama's economic team has "turned a corner" on those issues, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Sunday.

The liberal Brown, who represents a blue-collar state, has pressured the White House to focus more on aiding the manufacturing sector in order to create more middle-class jobs. On Friday, Brown said that he stands behind Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, but sought improvement from the agency on middle-class issues.

"I think they've turned a corner," Brown said on CNN's "State of the Union." "The focus next year is all about creating jobs and I think we'll begin to see changes."

Geithner, National Economic Council chairman Larry Summers and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke have come unde fire from conservative congressmen and a growing amount of liberal lawmakers for policies they say heavily favor Wall Street banks instead of the middle-class and small businesses.

Brown appeared to key in on reports that President Barack Obama will use next year's State of the Union address to take on job creation an outline a domestic agenda that focuses on reducing the federal deficit. Brown said that Obama advisers such as manufacturing czar Ron Bloom are starting to have a bigger impact at the White House.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/69035-brown-obama-economic-team-has-turned-a-corner

[firedupdem]

1. Rec'd n;/t

[rurallib]

2. I trust Brown.

[Cha]

10. He has a good reputation..

[Ikonoklast]

3. The financial sector had to be put to rights, first.

It was ugly and a paste job, but imminenet collapse was averted, and despite all the naysayers here, it is actually working.

Now, it is time to focus on the second leg, getting people back to work.

Sen. Brown is my guy, and when he says something, you can take that as being on the level.

[Cant trust em]

4. TARP is a pain in the ass and has been mishandled, but it was necessary.

I wouldn't mind it as much if there more restrictions on predatory lending and risky trading. Unfortunately without that it hasn't been as effective as it could have been.

[Ikonoklast]

5. I hate TARP. Hate Hate HATE.

But, as ugly and smelly as that steaming turd is, it actually mostly accomplished what needed doing.

After they took care of Wall Street and made sure the proper benefactors were made whole, now it's Main Street's turn.

[FatDave]

7. "it is actually working."

Yes, it's working quite well for all the execs who are getting their multi-million dollar bonuses this year.

I'm not disagreeing with you though, something did need to be done, and something was done. It's just that there were many better things that could have been done.

[girl gone mad]

12. If by "working", you mean that the losses were papered over..

then, yes, it's working.

As a scientist, I always seek proof of extraordinary claims, such as the claim that TARP, a program which was hastily planned in the midst of an engineered credit crisis, then used in a manner significantly different from that on which it was premised to congress and the public, somehow saved us from an imminent and certain, but unknowable, meltdown scenario.

Most of the corporatists will refuse to acknowledge this, but the "do nothing" argument is actually quite economically sound. "Do nothing" was put to the test in 1921 and is widely considered to have been one of the more successful recessionary approaches. The result off letting the chips fall last year would have certainly been deeper and longer liquidations, perhaps a few more bankruptcies on Wall Street and a larger decline in the finance sector, but we would probably have been recovering by this point. And not the half-assed re-bubble "recovery" that we see now, complete with zombified banks, moral hazard, and lingering inflation uncertainty, but a solid, stable return to growth, albeit from and at a lower level than we were accustomed to.

I was never in the "do nothing" camp, but the intellectual dishonesty with which its critics approach the subject deeply irritates me. There is no proof whatsoever that doing nothing would have put us in a worse circumstance over the short or long term, merely wild speculation and incomplete economic models, much of these emanating from the very parties who benefited from the bailouts, the same people who spent years poo-pooing the notion that there was a housing bubble or that Wall Street debt leveraging was out of control.

[bain_sidhe]

6. Reminds me of an old Mae West story

Apparently, Mae West was visiting the White House during the depression. During her visit, she needed to answer a call of nature, and asked the guard where the bathroom was. He replied, "just around the corner." To which Ms. West quipped "I'm not looking for prosperity, hon, just a little relief."

Ok, yes, a bit off topic, but I still laugh/wince when I hear that something is just "around the corner" - which of course, means that you can't see it, you just have to trust that it's there. I don't trust that easily anymore.

[impik]

8. Of course they did. Only

The media, the haters from right and left, and people with really bad memory can deny that this administration prevented a total catastrophe.

[Cha]

9. Too bad our country has so many

ignorant haters who would rather cut off their nose to spite their face.

[Clio the Leo]

11. Kickage. NT