The Kennedy administration has been described as having attracted the best and the brightest to government service, sometimes with bad but well-intentioned results.
I don’t know Alan Krueger, Obama’s new head of the Council of Economic Advisers. But Ezra Klein claims to know a lot about Krueger, describing him as such:
… Krueger is arguably the leading labor economist in the country. He’s known for bringing a near-superhuman rigor to a subject that, oddly enough to non-economists, had fallen into a bit of disrepute in the profession …
Obama’s new top economic adviser has undertaken superhuman efforts in a subject matter that has fallen into disrepute.
We’ve gone from the best and the brightest to the best of the worst. What possibly could go wrong?
Update: What possibly could go wrong already has, via The Hill:
While at Treasury, Krueger served as a vocal advocate for a number of programs contained in the 2009 stimulus package. In particular, he called on Congress to extend beyond 2010 the Build America Bonds (BAB) program, which encouraged state and local governments to borrow for capital projects by subsidizing the interest costs of their bonds. Those efforts proved unsuccessful, as the BABs expired at the end of that year alongside many other aspects of the stimulus.
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