Daniel Henninger, writing in the Wall Street Journal about Obama’s worst week, stated:
Mr. Goolsbee announced he was departing the White House for the irresistible pull of academic tenure. What this signifies is that Mr. Goolsbee, a reputable economist, knows that in terms of economic policy, the Obama armory is empty. From within the exclusively demand-side context of the president’s economic policy, there are no more bullets in the carbines. This president is now virtually defenseless against the inexorable forces of the U.S. economy. All that’s left is whatever comes of Ben Bernanke’s 30 months of close-to-zero interest rates atop two Quantitative Easings, the greatest untested economics experiment in the history of the world.
In my opinion, Goolsbee is no loss in the sense that he did anything positive. His departure is, however, significant in that it signals the hopelessness of the Keynesian approach to solving the economy’s problems. All bullets and arrows known to Keynesians have been used up with nothing to show for them other than a further impoverishment of the country.
It is probably too early to declare this week as Obama’s worst. There are too many weeks ahead and so much potential for future weeks to surpass this one.
