Alan Krueger (Chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers)
Tweets:
Krueger implies Stockman’s opinions r not worthy of consideration “…not a serious scholar of the economy.”
Krueger suggests that fixing infrastructure has the highest payoff. Problem: haven’t *ever* done it, & the budget 2 deep in deficit
Krueger spending a lot of time criticizing the sequester, suggests there is a way to do smart cuts. When have we ever done that?
Krueger on Jobs data: “Numbers are very volatile. Too much attention given to monthly jobs number.”
Krueger goes on talking about inequality, has few solutions; education is slow if it works, throwing $$ @ it hasn’t worked recently
Krueger suggests that people have to adjust their definition of fairness. Trouble is there is no fairness, it is all based on trade
Disappointing answers from Krueger on the inflation topic. Seems disconnected from what Main Street is feeling.
“‘Fix it First’ infrastructure program, $40B from winding down wars, will help job growth.”
I would only add that education is no panacea. We’ve thrown a lot of money at it for years, with little incremental results. Structural changes are needed to remove substandard teachers, eliminate collective bargaining if needed, move back to a “basics” curriculum similar to that used in the 50s (with updated science & history), etc. We have to recognize that we have let fools dictate our curricula, and reverse the damage.
Other Stuff
Thanks to Peter Cook, Tom Keene, and Stephanie Call at Bloomberg for humoring me. Thanks to Cate Long (bright lady) and other tweeters for covering the conference.
There was a lot of love for Canada, thinking it to be far better run than the US, as its financial economy teeters with too much mortgage debt.
And some more tweets:
Humorous panel w/Harvey Pitt, Robert Engle, and Anthony Scaramucci — Engle is clueless, thinking Fed policy can be easily removed
Pitt: if I were a college professor, I would give Congress an “F” for Dodd-Frank
Federal Reserve less independent since Dodd-Frank, & not in a good way, it supports the US financial sector & government
Gotta give Scaramucci credit for getting on this panel, he has said some notably odd things
Engle correct in noting that the tea party has made Washington a 3-party game, which creates a complex blocked situation
John Rogers of the CFA Institute asks Engle why we should invest in a new bubble created by the Federal Reserve? Engle waffles.
I also got the final question on that panel:
Why should investors be confident when economic policy is unpredictable, and debt levels are higher than that in the Great Depression?
They didn’t have a good answer, though Engle tried. That said, with valuations so high, it looks like investors are confident, or they “have learned to stop worrying, and learned to love the Bomb.”
It was a very good conference; I learned a lot. You can view the videos off of Bloomberg.
By David Merkel, CFA of alephblog
