Word: friedmanism
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When George W. Bush wanted to run a sniff test for his audacious tax-cut program, which includes eliminating the levy on corporate dividends, he dispatched his new economics chief, Stephen Friedman, to New York City to wave it under the noses of such bankers as UBS America chairman Donald Marron and brokerage legend Muriel Siebert. Friedman is a polished pinstriper, a former Goldman Sachs chairman with the kind of Street cred the Administration lacked before purging its economic team last month. In four meetings, Friedman did as much listening as talking, knowing enough not to insult his former brethren...
...mathematical logic underpinning the plan is already stirring controversy. Hubbard and Friedman are making a huge and controversial macroeconomic bet that deficits don't matter, effectively reversing a decade of policymaking. "This Administration is trying to change the whole intellectual basis for fiscal policy that Alan Greenspan enforced when deficits were large in the early 1990s," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com a research firm. "We got fiscal discipline through the idea that deficits matter. That's been flipped on its head...
...national economic adviser Bush chose Larry Lindsey, an economist and former Fed governor who was so suspicious of the markets that he refused to invest his own money in them. O'Neill and Lindsey are now gone, and in Lindsey's place is former Goldman Sachs co-chairman Steve Friedman, the kind of Wall Street sharpie Bush once loathed...
...fired as President Bush's top economic-policy adviser. Nobody at the White House disputed the figure--they just didn't want it brought up. This is called being off-message, and in Washington that's much worse than being, say, wrong. Lindsey's replacement, investment banker Stephen Friedman, was found to have economic beliefs not always in keeping with the Administration's message (easily summarized in two words: tax cuts). But the important thing is that he will stick to the message from now on, whatever it happens...
...speak the language of the financial markets and calm them when necessary. "The model is Bob Rubin," said a White House insider of the Goldman, Sachs co-chairman, who headed the National Economic Council (NEC) and then the Treasury Department during the Clinton Administration. Bush advisers say Stephen Friedman, who co-chaired Goldman at Rubin's side, is being courted heavily for the NEC job. But candidates for other spots on the economic team have also been sought among nonfinancial companies. Though Bush recognizes that his lifelong skepticism of Wall Street may have shaken its faith in his policies...