Even a limp horse pulls. Everyone has a purpose. But you really wonder if there shouldn’t be closer adult supervision when Austan Goolsbee speaks in (non/semi/openly) public forums. Perhaps a pair of Kissinger glasses with teleprompter HUD? You certainly wouldn’t be pushing him too much farther in personal appearance. Maybe a discrete earpiece with a direct signal from Rahm Emanuel. Sure, it’d sound a little like he was giving dictation, but that’s whole lot better.
“If you tried to slash spending and raise taxes you would repeat what drove us into the Great Depression,” he said. “Treasury and the administration have embarked on a whole bunch of policies that have eased the credit spread quite substantially. There is no question that it is going to be a bumpy ride, but it is a signal achievement to be less worse.”
I’m not sure we had to bold that. Is this just poor copy-editing by Bloomberg? We don’t think so. We think it more likely these words actually escaped the Gool’s lips. What could this have been parsed from?
“There is no question that it is going to be a bumpy ride, but it is a signaled agreement to be less worse.”
“There is no question that it is going to be a bumpy ride, but it is a singular achievement to be less worse.”
“There is no question that it is going to be a bumpy ride, but it is a singular achievement to be bratwurst.”
Who knows. Then there are these gems:
I am thrilled, overjoyed that we aren’t all out of our jobs and we have prevented the Great Depression….
It is unrealistic to think you are going to solve all our problems in a three-month period.
Sheesh.
Obama Prevented Depression, Now Needs Patience, Goolsbee Says [Bloomberg]
Man, he does a great Carl Spackler impression!
http://www2.crk.umn.edu/campusinfo/wkbulletin/04-05/CarlSpackler.jpg
What is his official title?
@2- senior economic adviser
sig·nal (sgnl)
n.
…
adj.
Notably out of the ordinary: a signal feat; a signal event.
Or maybe your English isn’t as good as his. To me, Swahili may sound like nonsense, but that is not the fault of the Swahili speaker.
“signal achievement” means an important achievement.
Or maybe your English isn’t as good as his. To me, Swahili may sound like nonsense, but that is not the fault of the Swahili speaker.
“signal achievement” means an important achievement.
nice double post
What could he have said differently? He is after all a liberal economist and a key member of the administration. Or is the big issue here that he bumbled one word. Not so sure that’s true even. My guess is that BB mistook “signal” for “singular”. Must be a slow news day.
Well, Obama did just claim to save 150,000 jobs* with the stimulus package, so clearly he knows what he’s doing.
*(at a cost of only $700 billion)
How do you say “double post” in Swahili?
I don’t understand the post.
9 Except that the cost was not $700B. You need to learn to distinguish between a balance sheet and an income statement.
I, for one, am relieved. I was sure that Obama would destroy the U.S. economy just like Dennis Kucinich drove Cleveland into bankruptcy in late ’70′s. Or the way Carter ran the U.S. economy into the ground. Because that’s the way liberals work.
I am relieved that Obama hasn’t, indeed, caused the second Great Depression (yet). And that success is being redefined as “Less Worse.” I’m glad old Austan agrees with me.
I am the CEO of a hedge fund. What is the difference between “a balance sheet” and an “income statement”? TIA.
Please explain: “You certainly wouldn’t be pushing him too much farther in personal appearance.” Talk about incoherent.
Great, a panel of 39 year old financiers/politicians debating an egomaniacal retiree….. If Myron Scholes was the Nobel Prize winner we would have had a trifecta.
13 I for one was hoping for a repeat of the Bush prosperity. Ooops… there was none. Turned out that it was all attributable to housing. Which it turns out was the biggest of all bubbles. And in the mean time, when no one was watching, the manufacturing economy was devastated.
You can’t claim that he saved 150,000 jobs. As Gooslbee said he is “overjoyed that we aren’t all out of our jobs”. That means anyone who still has a job has obama to thank for saving it.
I think this 150,000 job thing is going to be BO’s “Mission Accomplished”. Actually, now that I think about it, BO’s claim is only about 1/1000th as absurd.
@ 9 – Agree with Obama’s shitty performance on economy. Notably, where exactly are those 150,000 “saved or created” jobs? Last I checked, the economy shed 1.9 mil nonfarm jobs since he took office. I guess we should just be thankful it’s not 2.4mil, huh?
@20….so if you were in the icy water waiting for rescue after the Titanic sank, you’d be blaming your rescuers for the sinking?
“That damn Carpathia!! Since we signaled for help, 1100 people have drowned after we hit the iceberg!! “
@20 where’d you learn math
@17…i’ll refer you to DB’s favorite superhero, Green Lantern:
“The Obama administration disappointingly seems to be following the same path as the Bush administration,” he said. “The basic strategy appears to be to try to bring us back to 2006 by propping up asset prices and reflating the popped credit bubble, subsidizing bank creditors and shareholders, and delaying needed bank recapitalizations, while hoping for an economic recovery.”
@12, you’re right; fair is fair. They’ve only spent $112 billion of it so far. That’s still $750,000 per job.
What I’m saying is that, were I one of the “saved”, I think I’d rather have the cash than my new job installing solar panels in Seattle or whatever you call it.
-9
where it rains a lot.
Were you guys not listening when he said that ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for’?
The statements by Goolsbee are self-explanatory. If EP doesn’t know what “signal achievement” means, then back to private equity for you. (See @4 and @5.)
So next time consult a dictionary.
Sheesh!
It’s the “less worse” nonsense that is the highlight of the flub, not to mention the general tenor of scatterbrain optimism.
Next time I’ll be more granular about which piece I bold.
@28
Whether we have a less worse economy now is a matter of opinion.
But back to phrasing, would you rather have him say the second derivative is no longer negative?
Anyways, Kedrosky already beat you to that.
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/05/cliche_watch_le.html
It certainly feels less worse. In Jan/Feb the US was eerie. Didn’t you happen to find yourself in any malls, airports, office buildings or downtowns around that time? People were basically comatose.
@30 – yeah, that happens every Jan/Feb in a phenomenon called winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
31 No way. Had nothing to do with winter. People simply stayed home and clamped their wallets shut. Everyday was like 47th Street on Rosh Hashunah.
@15 it means he is fugly…..
I hate this guy, not only is he an idiot but I am not quite sure how he got a degree in economics because I am pretty sure he never took Econ101…..
@34
How dare you insult the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the Booth School of Business?
Maybe it’s just some prank on his Wiki entry but how the hell did this guy manage to win the NCFL national championship in extemporaneous speaking, not once but twice?
-Monkey’s uncle
Goolsbee sounds scattered because he is expected to fill in the non-existent details of his boss’s promises.
He understands the economics well enough. But in politics you can’t tell the truth, and decent people can have trouble being truthful and on message.
I don’t think he understands the politics of shaping and selling policy, or the motives of the real players. He’s misread the Bob Rubin experience, and thinks that being smart will be enough. It won’t.
obama is bush on steroids.. wait until every state barack saved from defaulting in march and april of 2009 default in 2011.. same goes for troubled homeowners and jobs he saved… the only difference will be that our currency in 2011 will be worthless..
BO, you have reinflated the bubble, thank you