The Economist Tees Off

Not exactly impressed with The President's economic team, are they. The Economist (03.17.05):

"By most measures, the president has quite an ambitious economic agenda for his second term. George Bush's goals include overhauling the tax code, reforming the Social Security system, halving the budget deficit and pushing through more trade agreements. But who exactly is meant to do all this stuff? The Treasury itself seems short of both staff and clout with the administration. That might be excusable if economic policy were being steered by a professional team in the White House; but it too is short of economists...." Not exactly major league

The Economist finds "two growing suspicions about Mr Bush's approach to economic policy": First, "he sees it mainly as a question of salesmanship. Showing an admirable faith in markets, the president seems to think that economic policy will basically run itself; what you need is a bit of pizzazz to sell the president's reforms." Second, "loyalty is more important than knowledge." "Unfortunately, markets never work quite that sweetly. What would Mr Bush's team do if there was some sort of international economic crisis, such as a dollar crash?" "(G)iven the lack of strength within the administration, the risks now are surely higher. Mr Bush should be crossing his fingers that nothing goes wrong." We are too.