Summers Out? Don't Let the Door Hit You...and Take Romer with You

The buzz is that Larry Summers is leaving the Obama administration. Two points. One, this would score another one for me in my prediction tally, putting me at 3 for 8 not halfway through the year. Two, if Larry leaves it'll be no surprise and I'll not shed a tear - he deserves the boot. There is no possible way that he thought (if he is as bloody smart as Mankiw makes out) the stimulus package, Obama's signature economic policy, would work and he should have counselled against it. Plus there are any number of detrimental economic policies coming out of this administration for which you could say the same thing and he sat and watched these policies roll out. Maybe the politics has run roughshod over economic policy, but if he felt politics was dictating bad policy he should have said so and resigned. He didn't and he therefore owns the policy, and should suffer as the policy fails. Ditto for Romer, who I've said before, has become a joke. The Obama administration has done everything it can to drive businesses to curl up in the fetal position and yet these two still cling to their silly government spending multipler story ignoring the many burdens piling up on businesses that create the jobs. It's embarrassing.

UPDATE: Just a little recent economic statistic: Consumer credit has plunged...apparently unexpectedly...really, unexpectedly???