Dean Baker on Jacob Lew

Jacob Lew, the head of President Obama's Office of Management and Budget, had a column in the New York Times that should really scare the American people. While the purpose of the column was ostensibly to tell the American people that there are few easy budget cuts left, the scary part is that Mr. Lew seems to have little understanding of the economy.

Lew boasts about the huge budget surplus at the end of the Clinton administration. He shows no understanding of the fact that these surpluses were largely the result of a stock bubble, which was inevitably going to burst. The story of the economy's growth at that point was that the $10 trillion stock bubble fueled a consumption boom, which led to strong economic growth.

Of course the bubble was not sustainable, when it burst, the consumption it supported also disappeared. We only recovered from the recession when the housing bubble created enough demand to replace the demand lost from the collapse of the stock bubble.
The underlying problem was the over-valued dollar. This was a conscious policy of the Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who actively pushed a "strong dollar" policy. This policy effectively gave a large subsidy to imports and imposed a large tax on U.S. exports. The result was a huge U.S. trade deficit.

Given a large trade deficit, the economy needs either large government deficits or very low private savings to sustain high levels of employment. This is not a partisan issue; it is an accounting identity.

Mr. Lew shows no understanding of this basic point. Either this top Obama official is ignorant of basic economics or he is not being honest with the American people. Either way, it is an incredibly scary column.