Obama Names Jason Furman As Economic Policy Director

[babylonsister]

Obama Names Rubin Ally Furman to Economic Policy Post (Update2)

By Kim Chipman and Matthew Benjamin


June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's presidential campaign named Jason Furman, a former adviser to 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry who worked closely with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, as economic policy director.

Until recently, Furman, 37, worked as an economist and budget expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, where he was director of the Hamilton Project, a research group that generates economic proposals and is aligned with the Democratic Party. In that role Furman worked with Rubin, who helped launch Hamilton in 2006. Rubin, 69, now chairman of Citigroup Inc.'s executive committee, is on the project's advisory council.

Furman said the Obama campaign's economic goal, like the Hamilton Project's, is based on ``broadly shared, bottom-up growth.''

``You need to empower people to make the economy work for them,'' he said.

Furman said his priority as Obama's economic policy director would be to expand the range of advice and proposals flowing to the Democratic nominee by reaching out to a wider group of economists.

``My key mandate, which came directly from the senator, is to bring him a diverse set of voices and ideas, because that's the kind of debate he likes to hear to make up his mind about his economic agenda,'' Furman said. He named Rubin, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder as advisers the campaign would turn to.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=acigw2e6gl8Y&refer=us

**********************************
snip//

The second is that the Obama campaign has hired Jason Furman as their economic policy director. Jason's an extremely bright, and extremely politically skilled, economist. He's most recently of the centrist Hamilton Project, but he's well-respected across the party. Ideologically, he's not too different from Austen Goolsbee, so don't expect a large change in tone or substance. The difference is that he's better versed in how to run a campaign's economic shop (Goolsbee was -- and is -- an academic), which is a skill set the Obama campaign has been needing for some time.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=06&year=2008&base_name=campaign_news

[liberal N proud]

1. Bottom-up growth, the only way to get this country back on top

The least among us has to have the money to spend because he will. He has to spend it to live for one thing.

You give a person making $15,000 a year, $3,000 and he will spend it which will pay forward on up the ladder.

You give the millionaire $15,000 and he will put in an offshore account never doing anything for the economy

[Shoelace]

2. so true

I like to call it "trickle UP economics"!:grouphug:

[JuniperLea]

3. All those Reagan-esque trickle down charts...

Are upside down... you are absolutely correct. This has been a major hoax for a very long time.