Timothy GEITHNER
Shah says: Trim Tim would love the job, and he's lean and mean enough to put up a good behind-the-scenes fight for it. Will he get the nod? Yes he will -- from the bankers and brokers whose backs he's scratched for far too long.
Shah says: Trim Tim would love the job, and he's lean and mean enough to put up a good behind-the-scenes fight for it. Will he get the nod? Yes he will -- from the bankers and brokers whose backs he's scratched for far too long.
But from the Prez? Hope not, because he's young and his future ambitions will include mega-wealth, to which he will be entitled for using his offices as tools for entitling the banks and brokers he serves to mega riches, from which they would gladly siphon off some tens of millions to get the diminutive one to stand tall as a chairman or CEO of some vast infinity bonus pool.
Martin says: The ultimate bureaucrat, with few ideas of his own. He tends to get pushed around by stronger wills. When policy hits a wall, he sucks a thumb.
Lawrence SUMMERS
Shah says: Larry the Lame has about as much tact as a gigolo would have at a society women's old age home. He lives for the podium to pontificate... too bad he's always looking out at his audience to see if there are any hedge fund honchos he might consult for. Consult? Yeah... as in, pay me now and I'll make you richer if I get into any power slot anywhere, and then hire me after to thank me, deal? Oh yeah, he's done that deal.
Shah says: Larry the Lame has about as much tact as a gigolo would have at a society women's old age home. He lives for the podium to pontificate... too bad he's always looking out at his audience to see if there are any hedge fund honchos he might consult for. Consult? Yeah... as in, pay me now and I'll make you richer if I get into any power slot anywhere, and then hire me after to thank me, deal? Oh yeah, he's done that deal.
Don't forget, Larry was once featured on the cover of Time as one of their three in the "Committee to Save the World." The other two: Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan. And if you don't know how the three of them caused the credit crisis and the Great Recession, go stick your head back in the sand.
Martin says: The opposite of Geithner, too much will rather than too little. He has lots of knowledge of economic theory -- pity most of it's wrong. FOMC meetings would be fun, with temper tantrums during press conferences. Still, there's a reasonable chance that when disasters arose, he'd figure a way out.
Janet YELLEN
Shah says: My guess is that, as the current vice chair, Janet has a good chance at getting the nod. She's a mild-mannered bank boot licker who never met a printing press she didn't know how to operate.
Janet YELLEN
Shah says: My guess is that, as the current vice chair, Janet has a good chance at getting the nod. She's a mild-mannered bank boot licker who never met a printing press she didn't know how to operate.
Martin says: She basically takes the Tooth Fairy approach to monetary policy: The solution is always to print more money, whatever the problem is. Yellin is the most likely to land us in a true Weimar (hyperinflationary) situation.
Christina ROMER
Shah says: The truth about the former chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers is that she has made more predictions that were wrong in her career than a deaf and blind weatherman forecasting from a windowless studio. In other words, Christina would be perfect to run the Fed, since their predictions of where we are, where the economy is going, and whether the fog they laid over the country's future will ever lift have as much a chance of being right as I do of beating Tiger Woods at Augusta.
Shah says: The truth about the former chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers is that she has made more predictions that were wrong in her career than a deaf and blind weatherman forecasting from a windowless studio. In other words, Christina would be perfect to run the Fed, since their predictions of where we are, where the economy is going, and whether the fog they laid over the country's future will ever lift have as much a chance of being right as I do of beating Tiger Woods at Augusta.
Martin says: She's moderately sensible by Obama administration standards, and might actually be slightly more "hawkish" than Bernanke. But she wouldn't change anything fundamental, and so would be four more years of the wrong answer.
Roger FERGUSON
Shah says: Roger Ferguson? Who's that? Oh that Roger... the former vice chair of the Fed from 1999 to 2006. No, he won't cut it, he's too pliable and too good at losing money for big institutions. Nice guy, for sure, I'm just not sure of his talents... as in, what talents?
Roger FERGUSON
Shah says: Roger Ferguson? Who's that? Oh that Roger... the former vice chair of the Fed from 1999 to 2006. No, he won't cut it, he's too pliable and too good at losing money for big institutions. Nice guy, for sure, I'm just not sure of his talents... as in, what talents?
Martin says: Ferguson is much the best candidate; we're very lucky that he's an African-American Democrat, so Obama might actually pick him (probably not though, as the president's advisors would likely veto him.) If picked, he could be the Paul Volcker of our times.
He resigned from the vice-chairman post in 2006 after Bernanke was appointed. I heard him speak in December 2005, at which time he objected strongly to the Fed ceasing to report M3, an evil legacy of the last days of Alan Greenspan's tenure. At least potentially, he's a hard-money monetarist who would get it right, and is tough enough to bear the PR pain of doing so.
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