RIDDLE ME THIS...:

Obama’s Economic Circle Keeps Tensions High (JACKIE CALMES, 6/08/09, NY Times)

President Obama was getting his daily economic briefing one recent morning when a fly distracted him. The president swatted and missed, just as the pest buzzed near the shoes of Lawrence H. Summers, the chief White House economic adviser. “Couldn’t you aim a little higher?” deadpanned Christina D. Romer, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Mrs. Romer was joking, she said in an interview, adding, “There are only a few times that I felt like smacking Larry.” Yet few laughed in the president’s presence.

If the Oval Office incident was meant as a lighthearted moment, it also exposed the underlying tensions that have gripped Mr. Obama’s economic advisers as they have struggled with the gravest financial crisis since the Depression, according to several dozen interviews with administration officials and others familiar with the internal debates.

By all accounts, much of the tension derives from the president’s choice of the brilliant but sometimes supercilious Mr. Summers to be the director of the National Economic Council, making him the policy impresario of the team. The widespread assumption, from Washington to Wall Street, was that the job would be Mr. Summers’s way station until the president could name him chairman of the Federal Reserve when Ben S. Bernanke’s term expires early next year.

But Mr. Bernanke’s aggressive response to the crisis has so improved his reputation that people close to Mr. Obama increasingly suggest the president could well reappoint him in the interests of financial stability — just as Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton retained Fed chiefs who had been picked by predecessors of the other party. [...]

People familiar with the deliberations say that Mr. Summers has been more populist than they expected for a right-of-center economist, siding often with Mr. Obama’s political advisers. That has given rise to speculation among colleagues, associates and banking representatives that Mr. Summers is trying to win the Fed seat.

Why shouldn't Intelligence be politicized but it's okay for Economics to be? After all, lying about the threat Saddam posed just ended up with an evil regime replaced. Lying about economic theory could end up with our livelihoods displaced.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 9, 2009 6:13 AM