Christina Romer, who heads the Council of Economic Advisers for Obama, can't figure it out. She's still looking for "possible explanations," according to a recent New York Times piece. White House adviser David Axelrod doesn't even try to explain his confusion, and instead just jumps to finger-pointing -- at Republicans, of course. He says voters “aren’t necessarily prepared to turn back” to the Republicans, who “dug the hole” of joblessness to start with.
Whatever the case, Dems are going crazy, because they can't see that government doesn't really have a big hand in creating jobs, and there's endless conflicting advice as to how to wield the little hand it does have.
Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton economist who advised President Bill Clinton, and R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of the Columbia Business School and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, give two conflicting answers to the Times:
Mr. Hubbard suggests reduced business taxes. And he insists that Mr. Obama will deter small business hiring if he allows the Bush tax cuts for the highest earners to expire, since many of those earners run small businesses.
Obama advisers say extending those cuts would be an inefficient way to spur hiring. They favor two measures the Senate returns to this week: extended benefits for the unemployed, who they say are more likely to spend and spur the economy than top-earners are, and a new $30 billion small business lending program.For Mr. Blinder, the former Clinton adviser, that doesn’t go far enough. He favors New Deal-style hiring of workers onto public payrolls, since “we’re in pretty much a jobs emergency.”