July 22, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Brad DeLong links Robert Rubin's
Brad DeLong links Robert Rubin's assessment of the Bush economic team. He says that it's "unsurprisingly" negative, although I don't know if that's a slur on Bush or Rubin. But looking at Rubin's prescriptions, which are very fixated on capital markets, it got me thinking about the top folks in the Bush economic team, and the top economic players for the Dems. This is a question, not an answer, so Democrats please avoid jumping down my throat but: is part of the 90's bubble do to the fact that Clinton's economic team was obsessed by the market?
THose enamored of the New Democrat model have made much of the Clinton administration's connections to Wall Street. Not that this is a bad thing; I'm just thinking about the reforms they tout as the Clinton revolution, and most of them revolve around the Federal debt markets. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for deficit reduction, but the benefits claimed from deficit reduction are all out of proportion to what could actually be achieved with such a primitive tool. And the Clintonistas seemed to judge the health of the economy primarily by the health of the stock market -- which makes one suspect that their lower-level policies focused on keeping valuations high, and not bursting the bubble.
Of course, I thought the market was in full bubble back in 1998, so I'm probably not the person to trust on this issue. But I'm curious what other people think: did the Wall Street connection cause Cliinton economic policy to focus too hard on the markets?
Posted by Jane Galt at July 22, 2002 6:17 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links