OPINION

Possible Goolsbee Successor Not Big on New Stimulus

Townhall Staff
Townhall Staff  |  Jun 16, 2011
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When news broke last week that Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, will leave his post this fall to resume teaching at the University of Chicago, administration officials quietly suggested what they were looking for in a replacement: a standout academic economist who has already won Senate confirmation.

Perhaps no one in the federal government today fits that description better than Rebecca Blank. A poverty economist, a Clinton-era CEA member, and the former dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Blank is now Commerce Secretary Gary Locke’s top economic adviser. She’s the acting deputy secretary at Commerce and the under secretary for economic affairs.