How could you leave a job like that?
It’s not, as some accounts suggested, because ideas that I was associated with, like more stimulus, are off the table. I’m not happy about that and, in fact, I believe that if we were to make policy based purely on the economics, more stimulus would be at the top of the list. Excess capacity in the private sector, most importantly in the job market, is still the biggest problem we face, and given the cost of capital right now, the best way to both reduce unemployment and the short-run deficit is to grow faster.
So if it were up to me, I’d step a bit more on the fiscal accelerator. But that’s not why I left.
I left because I was frustrated. Not with what was going on inside the White House, but with what is going on outside.
The national debate over economic policy is way off track and the stakes are as high as can be. In every important area of economic and social policy—health care, fiscal policy (deficits, debt, taxes), public investment, retirement security, climate change, education, job growth, income distribution—there’s so much misinformation, so many false assertions, that it is impossible for anyone paying attention to evaluate the choices with which they’re faced.
Falsehoods and misinformation are of course a problem, but another problem is the range of acceptable views that our press will cover, which creeps a little more rightward every year.