Word: feldstein
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...Feldstein is incredibly businesslike," reports Beckwith. "At the end of our interview, I took a minute to review my notes. Instead of just sitting there, Feldstein got up and went to his desk to work. He has wit and humor, but frankly, it is the dry, academic kind that isn't going to keep Johnny Carson from sleeping nights...
...Congress, the Treasury Secretary, once the chairman of Merrill Lynch, ridiculed Feldstein as an ivory-tower professor who has spent too much time in the library. Regan has often dismissed Feldstein's fears about the deficits. "I wish those economists would sit back and relax," he said on one occasion. "This will be one of the greatest recoveries in history...
Where Regan is concerned, Feldstein holds his fire in public, but privately he can be condescending-and worse-toward the Treasury Secretary. Aides say that Feldstein speaks of Regan as a slow, recalcitrant student who must be patiently tutored and humored. He does an imitation of how the Treasury Secretary loses his temper, pounds on the table and utters a stream of expletives...
...While Feldstein has infuriated Regan, he has aroused equally intense ire at the White House. Not since Budget Director David Stockman was taken to the woodshed for revealing doubts about Reaganomics in the Atlantic Monthly in 1981 has the Administration been so embarrassed, and harassed, by one of its economic gurus. The President's aides accuse the economist of being disloyal and giving ammunition to the opposition during an election campaign. Says one staffer: "He's made the CEA a four-letter word around here." On several occasions, the White House has censored advance texts of Feldstein...
Atop policymaker who is one of Feldstein's handful of Administration allies thinks that many White House aides have become unreasonable and downright unfair to the economist: "They're saying he wants to get his national name recognition up to 40% and that he's determined to go down in the history books as the man who tried to stop those deficits. It's pretty nasty stuff. It's not really justified...