Re: [Pen-l] Dr. Freud, your slip is showing

[joel blau <jblau@xxxxxxxxx>]

The CEA is the result of the watered down, totally compromised version 
of the 1946 Full Employment Act. Labor feared that with demobilization, 
the U.S.  would return to depression era levels of unemployment. So they 
pushed for a government planning board that would have made government 
the employer of last resort. Determined to send a message that postwar 
was not going to be like prewar, a large business coalition snipped this 
incipient social democracy in the bud. The bill's fallback position--a 
very large fallback, indeed--was that instead of enforcing full 
employment, a CEA would become part of the executive branch and advise 
the president on economic policy.  So like much else in the growth of 
the federal bureaucracy, we have accretion as an accidental byproduct of 
legislation--economists scattered everywhere, but none of them with a 
real portfolio that gives them any genuine power.

Joel Blau

Jim Devine wrote:
> This morning as I drove to work, I heard US National Public Radio's
> newsreader refer to the "Asian Pacific Economic Corporation" forum.
> (it's Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation.)
>
> BTW, it looks as if Prez-elect Obama will be appointing pen-l's _bête
> noire_, Larry "I'm Brilliant" Summers to lead the US federal
> government's National Economic Council. That's a quite step down for
> the guy, who used to stand astride the world at the Treasury and at
> Harvard.
>
> What I don't get is the point of this organization: doesn't the
> President already have a Council of Economic Advisers? plus a slew of
> economists at Treasury, Labor, Commerce, etc., etc.? Didn't Presidents
> before Clinton I get along pretty well without the National Economic
> Council? One of Obama's attractions is that (unlike the current fellow
> in the White House) he seems sane. One sane thing to do would be to
> get rid of unnecessary organizations.
>
> Also, I wonder when they're going to re-paint the White House.
>   


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