Via Atrios, Mike Konczal writes a good piece on the failures of the Obama Administration's economic team. The link to this February 2011 Pro Publica piece reminds us how Geithner failed on the homeowner crisis:

Congressional Democrats [. . .] thought cramdowns would serve as a stick, pushing banks to make modifications on their own. [. . .] Privately, administration officials were ambivalent about the idea. At a Democratic caucus meeting weeks before the House voted on a bill that included cramdown, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner “was really dismissive as to the utility of it,” said Rep. Lofgren. Larry Summers, then the president’s chief economic adviser, also expressed doubts in private meetings, she said. “He was not supportive of this.”

Fast forward to today's mess. Konczal writes:

Very very strange reaction from the White House on Kathy Hochul's victory in the NY-26 special election:

President Obama congratulated the winner of Tuesday's special election in upstate New York, in a statement that didn't mention Medicare: "I want to extend my congratulations to Congresswoman-elect Kathy Hochul for her victory in New York's 26th Congressional District. Kathy and I both believe that we need to create jobs, grow our economy, and reduce the deficit in order to outcompete other nations and win the future. Kathy has shown, through her victory and throughout her career, that she will fight for the families and businesses in western New York, and I look forward to working with her when she gets to Washington."

Steve Israel said there were three issues in this race -- "Medicare, Medicare and Medicare." Obama could not say the word even one time. That's troubling.

Speaking for me only

Atrios writes:

I'm quite happy bashing the media, as usual, but I think they're getting a bit of a bum rap. They're covering the deficit in large part because both major political parties are mostly talking about the deficit. If some charismatic politician with the ability to get people to point some cameras at him spent more time talking about jobs and coming up with policies for jobs and talking about those the media would be talking about that too.

The Obama Administration decided to NOT talk about the deficit when it extended the Bush tax cuts in The Deal made with Republicans in December 2010. Because they didn't, the deficit discussion now entirely ignores the Bush/Obama tax cuts. If the Deal was not struck in December, I feel confident that the stagnant economy and jobs would be a focal point of discussion now. Instead, the argument is about how much Medicare should be cut. Hell, people might have even done something about jobs and the economy. The Obama Administration made a terrible mistake when it cut the Deal in December.

Speaking for me only

The White House just announced President Obama will make a live statement tonight around 8:30 pm MT (about 3 minutes from now) on an undisclosed topic.

You can watch live here. The New York Times and CNN report Obama will announce Osama bin Laden has been killed and the U.S. has his body. McClatchy says the body was found in Pakistan. The Guardian:

Osama's body is in possession of the US, having been killed in Pakistan as the result of a US special forces and CIA operation, according to the first leaks of reporting from the US television networks.

President Obama has released his birth certificate. You can view it here.

The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn't good for the country. It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country. Therefore, the President directed his counsel to review the legal authority for seeking access to the long form certificate and to request on that basis that the Hawaii State Department of Health make an exception to release a copy of his long form birth certificate. They granted that exception in part because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting.

Will the absurd accusations stop? Unlikely. Of all the non-issues raised by the right to Obama, this is one of the most ridiculous.

President Obama will announce tomorrow that Robert Gates will be replaced as Secretary of Defense by Leon Panetta, and David Petraeus will become head of the CIA.

The changes, which will not take effect until this summer, essentially preserve the status quo on the national security team as the administration heads into a crucial period of turmoil in the Middle East and South Asia, U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq and a make-or-break year in Afghanistan.

John Judis:

[2012] is most likely [to be] a situation similar to that faced by George H.W. Bush in 1992: a sluggish economy that is improving, but at a sufficiently slow rate to leave a gap between fact and perception that rival politicians will attempt to fill.

So far, Obama has not done very well in filling that gap. He has allowed Republicans to make a case that things are getting worse, and he has cooperated with them in taking measures that will actually make things worse. He has allowed Republicans to set the terms of the debate. It has been about the perils of deficits and debt. That is not just bad economics; it also leads Democrats into a political cul-de-sac.

Kevin Drum writes:

The financial crisis of 2008 was a stupendous event, and it's frankly stunning to me how few people seem to have responded to it in any substantive way. Occasional throat clearing aside, it's been business as usual for a huge chunk of the political, business, and pundit class, especially on the right.

I just don't get that. The Great Collapse was a big enough, and unexpected enough, event that it should have changed your mind at least a little bit about something. If it didn't, you either have godlike powers of prognostication or else you've simply decided not to let real world events ever affect your worldview. I'm willing to put money on the latter.

What always amazes me about progressive bloggers writng things like this is how little they connect President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner to this. I have 4 letters for Kevin - H-A-M-P. Obama and Geithner claim it was a success. The latest NYTimes poll says that "Americans are more pessimistic about the nation’s economic outlook and overall direction than they have been at any time since President Obama’s first two months in office." Geithner tells Obama "all is well." It isn't.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias:

[Y]ou have conservative politicians refusing to make a serious effort to reach an agreement out of some blend of taxophobia and fear of giving the President a win. The result, again, whether the right realizes it or not, is a gift to the wing of the Democratic Party that disagrees with Obama about the desirability of enacting spending cuts.

I doubt this very much. But here's hoping! The problem is tax policy. Will Obama let the Bush tax cuts expire? I hope so.

There has been a hubbub about President Obama's recent signing statement regarding the stopgap spending bill

Despite my continued strong objection to [Sections 1112 and 1113 - regarding transfer of Gitmo detainees] these provisions, I have signed this Act because of the importance of avoiding a lapse in appropriations for the Federal Government, including our military activities, for the remainder of fiscal year 2011.

Nothing indicates an intent to violate the law there. The part of the signing statement many have focused on is the "czar" issue:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner:

The hard thing is not to raise the debt limit, because Congress will always do that, and they recognize that. The hard thing is to try to take advantage of this moment, and get Republicans and Democrats to come together and lock in some reforms that will reduce our long-term deficits.

(Emphasis supplied.) No one ever wants to take "advantage of" a moment to help create jobs. In case you're wondering, Grover Norquist has won.

Speaking for me only

Earlier this week. Jed Lewison of daily kos wrote that the White House had called the GOP Bluff on the Debt Ceiling. Today, President Obama made Lewison look rather foolish:

[Obama] warned that anything less would undermine the solvency of the government, roil financial markets and potentially "plunge the world economy back into a recession." Yet when pressed on how the stalemate with House Speaker John Boehner would end, Obama said: "I think he's absolutely right that it's not going to happen without some spending cuts."

Speaking for me only