Greg Mankiw agrees with Paul Krugman that Obama’s econ team so far is impressive but firmly rejects, with some objective references, Krugman’s assertion that Bush’s economists were “hacks and cronies.”
Mankiw’s right that Harvey Rosen, Ed Lazear, and Glenn Hubbard, among others, are highly-respected, first-rate economists. Too bad a few simple, bad decisions — like the indefensible and disastrous weak-dollar policy pushed by otherwise smart people like John Taylor and Martin Feldstein — completely swamped the demonstrably positive yield of Bush’s tax cuts.
We will be teasing out the different strands of Bush economic policy for a very long time.
