Criticism was swift in coming after President Barack Obama tapped Princeton University economist Alan Krueger to succeed Austan D. Goolsbee as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. An opinion piece in
The Washington Examiner noted that Krueger, who previously served as an assistant secretary of the Treasury under Timothy Geithner, was among the designers of such under-fire economic stimulus features as the "cash for clunkers" program.
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| Alan Krueger helped design the "cash for clunkers" program. |
Although Obama praised Krueger’s initiative in the first half of his administration and looked to him to develop policies to ramp up the economy, The Examiner opined: “Don't expect any new ideas from Krueger.”
The Examiner went on to list a couple of Krueger's mindsets that it says help solidify its argument that he is the wrong man with the wrong ideas to set Obama on the correct course.
• He co-authored a study seeking to disprove the common-sense economic truth that minimum-wage increases make it more costly for employers to hire teenagers and other low-skilled workers, which means they hire fewer of them, thus driving up unemployment.
• He is an advocate of the idea that the market prices of oil and natural gas do not reflect certain "externalities" that capture the social costs of using fossil fuels. In testimony before Congress last year, Krueger said "private market decisions can be inefficient when market prices do not reflect the full social costs.
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