Treasury Staffs Up, Brings More Progressives On Board

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


President Obama has taken a lot of heat for having an understaffed Treasury Department, so earlier this week he named three new assistant secretaries. I have a web article up on one of the three, Alan Krueger, who will be the assistant secretary for economic policy. Krueger has never worked for a bank, doesn’t have any connection to TARP or its later iterations, and has never pushed finance sector deregulation. Oh, and he shifted the conventional thinking on the minimum wage dramatically leftward in the 90s. From my article:

“To my mind, he would be one of the best people we could hope to get in this position,” says Dean Baker, head of the left-leaning Center for Economic Policy Research. Adds CEPR’s chief economist, John Schmitt: “He has done a lot of research that progressives would be very happy about. He is certainly one of the absolute top labor economists in the country.” One-time Clinton economic aide and Berkeley economist Brad DeLong calls Krueger a “good choice.”

Krueger is best known for his work on the minimum wage. In 1997, he co-wrote a book with economist David Card called Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage. They argued that the moderate increases in the minimum wage typically seen in the US don’t raise unemployment numbers—a thesis that went against much of the conventional wisdom at the time—and that such pay boosts have a substantial impact on the take-home pay of low-wage workers. The book, says progressive economist James K. Galbraith, established the minimum wage’s value “very firmly and to the horror of the mainstream.” At first, Krueger’s ideas on the minimum wage were highly controversial. “He took a lot of heat for that, and stood up,” says Schmitt. Krueger’s extensive background on issues related to job creation and wage distribution, Schmitt adds, will serve him well as the Obama team attempts to implement the stimulus bill, which aims to create over 3 million new jobs.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate