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Zer0 Says Borrow & Spend - Europe Says No

Mike

Well-known member
Atlantic stimulus rift grows
By Tony Barber in Brussels, Alan Beattie in Washington and George Parker in London

Published: March 10 2009 21:11 | Last updated: March 10 2009 23:04

Disagreements between the European Union and the US over how to combat the global recession widened on Tuesday as EU governments made clear they had little appetite for piling up more debt to fight the collapse in output and jobs.

Finance ministers from the 27-nation bloc insisted in Brussels that it was doing enough to support world demand and did not need at present to adopt another fiscal stimulus plan, as Washington is urging.

The US-European differences are casting a shadow over next month’s summit in London of leaders from the G20 group of advanced and emerging economies, an event to be attended by Barack Obama on his first visit to Europe as US president.

It also emerged that Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, was struggling to organise the summit. Britain’s most senior civil servant claimed it was hard to find anyone to speak to at the US Treasury. Sir Gus O’Donnell, cabinet secretary, blamed the “absolute madness” of the US system where a new administration had to hire new officials from scratch, leaving a decision-making vacuum.

“There is nobody there. You cannot believe how difficult it is,” he told a conference of civil servants.

The critical condition of Europe’s economy was underlined by official data on Tuesday showing French industrial output fell at a year-on-year rate of 13.8 per cent in January, the worst fall since records started in 1991. Despite the gloomy figures, stock markets around the world rebounded strongly. In New York, the S&P 500 index surged 6 per cent by mid-afternoon, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of leading European shares gained 5.3 per cent.

France, Germany and Italy, the eurozone’s three biggest countries, are anxious that the 16 countries sharing the euro should not run up ever-bigger budget deficits and public debt, potentially threatening the stability of the single currency area.

Mr Brown is more enthusiastic about a possible second stimulus package, and his government is placing less emphasis than Germany on the need for a prompt return to balanced budgets once economic recovery is under way.

Even so, the UK signed up to the joint EU finance ministers’ statement, which said: “The focus should now be on swift implementation of planned fiscal stimulus packages to avoid that the recession becomes entrenched. Once the recovery takes hold, an orderly reversal of the macroeconomic stimuli is warranted.”

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, warned on Tuesday against expecting too much from the G20 summit on April 2. “I think it’s asking too much for a meeting like that to come out with detailed proposals in many different areas,” he said. “I think the better goal for a meeting of leaders would be, as much as possible, to establish some principles that would guide reforms around the world.”

The Financial Times Limited 2009
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
When Obama said Geithner was the only one that could do the job, did he mean he wasn't going to hire anybody else?

Why has Obama neglected Treasury?
posted at 12:55 pm on March 11, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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President Barack Obama’s handy excuse for all sorts of goofs and missteps is that he’s too busy working on fixing the economy. In order to do that, one might expect that Obama would concentrate on building his economic team at the Department of the Treasury, where most of those efforts would originate and get managed. Instead, as noted earlier today, phones go unanswered at Treasury — and our allies and trading partners have begun complaining about the lack of effort in the White House.

Reports have floated around that “dozens” of positions remain unfilled at Treasury, most recently in the New York Times’ profile of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner:

Compounding the strain on the Treasury, almost all the top posts beneath Mr. Geithner are still vacant. Though he has hired about 50 senior advisers — about half the number he hopes to recruit — the White House has become so worried about potential tax problems and other issues in the backgrounds of candidates that it has nominated only a handful of people.

From that, we know that more than four dozen positions remain unfilled — positions that Geithner has to fill himself. But what about positions that the White House has to appoint? I researched that question this morning, and found the list of positions at Treasury that require White House appointment and Senate confirmation. It’s quite a list:

* Secretary
* Deputy Secretary
* Under Secretary — Domestic Finance
* Under Secretary — International Affairs
* Under Secretary — Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
* Assistant Secretary — Economic Policy
* Assistant Secretary — Financial Markets
* Assistant Secretary (Deputy Under Secretary) — International Affairs
* Assistant Secretary (Deputy Under Secretary) — Legislative Affairs
* Assistant Secretary — Management and Chief Financial Officer
* Assistant Secretary — Public Affairs/Director — Policy Planning
* Assistant Secretary — Tax Policy
* Chief Counsel — Internal Revenue Service/Assistant General Counsel for Tax
* Commissioner — Internal Revenue (five-year terms of office)
* General Counsel
* Inspector General
* Inspector General — Tax Administration
* Treasurer — United States

The White House has responsibility for appointing these 18 positions. Those appointments get handled by the Senate Finance Commitee, which after receiving the formal nominations, has to do background checks and other information gathering to prepare committee members for their hearings. It takes some time to get a nomination from the White House to a confirmation vote, but the clock doesn’t start — it can’t start — until Obama makes each nomination.

How many of these positions has Obama filled with a formal nomination? According to the White House website, this many:

* Secretary - Tim Geithner


That’s it. Just the one nomination, for what Barack Obama says is his greatest priority and gives as an excuse for his diplomatic incompetence. And these are just the political appointments that require Senate confirmation. It will take weeks to fill these positions even after the appointments get made, but Obama hasn’t even gotten to Step 1.

One of the basic tasks of any executive is staffing. In fact. it’s one of the chief complaints Republicans have with their new RNC chair, Michael Steele, who canned the staff and has yet to replace them. Obama has the responsibility to staff all of the positions in his administration, and especially where he keeps claiming his attention is placed. Instead of making it a priority,, Obama has left Treasury bereft of senior leadership. The failure to staff Treasury speaks volumes about his priorities – and his competence.

Update: I wanted to make sure that people understood that Obama hasn’t nominated anyone for these positions. The Finance Committee can’t process what they don’t get. I tightened up the language to make that clear.
 
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