The Escape Artists: How Obama's Team Fumbled the Recovery

by Noam Scheiber

Deeply sourced within Obama's economic team, Noam Scheiber is uniquely qualified to profile the squad of elite administration insiders who have set and managed the president's economic policies from before the start of his term in office, through the crisis, and into our current prolonged recovery. These are people we know-or think we know: Obama, Geithner, Summers, Orszag, and a host of others.Scheiber shares his profound understanding of each member of the group, examining how they work-or don't work-as a team, peeling back the layers of each personality while revealing the pragmatism, vision, and blind spots each has in the fight to resurrect the American economy. Along the way, he sorts out the truth from the myths and the tactical finger-pointing that surround the recent worldwide financial meltdown.Here, egos compete, personalities clash, and ideas do battle. Never before have we seen such a crystal-clear, in-depth look at the way economic power is wielded at the highest levels in our nation-in Washington, on Wall Street, and in their effects on millions of households in America.This book will become the key to understanding whether the Obama team will succeed in bringing us back from the brink of economic ruin-or whether they have set us up for another crisis.

Genres: Politics, History, Economics, Nonfiction, Government

368 pages, Hardcover

First published March 13, 2012

Reviews

[Neil Purcell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book focuses on President Obama's first term and the decisions he and his team made in response to the economic challenges he inherited from his predecessor. The political considerations and implications, and the personal strengths and weaknesses of the members of the president's economic team, are examined with lots of interesting details and loads of insightful observation by Mr. Scheiber. Although I am generally a supporter of President Obama, and will be very sorry to see him go in January, he and his team made a series of mistakes in managing the economy.

Yes, they saved us from a complete meltdown of the banking system and the worst depression we would ever have experienced, but our recovery was slow and painful - it is still painful for millions of Americans. And it didn't have to be this way.

Yes, the Republicans and their reckless and rabid obstruction, their uninformed approach to macroeconomics, and their nihilist attitude towards the role of the government, must take a large portion of the blame, but President Obama made it too easy for them, and ultimately he joined them in extolling the virtues of austerity in a time of high unemployment. Deficits and debt took precedence over jobs and economic security for those Americans who now attend Trump rallies.

Scheiber is no Obama-hater; neither am I. But the facts are the facts, and this is a fine narrative and analysis of the course of our recent economic and political history.

[Jeff Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book pegs itself as "how Obama's team fumbled the recovery," the book is primarily concerned with quick biographies of the economic team that was put together during and following Obama's election. Thus, the actual how takes a backseat to the who.

This is not to say that the who is unimportant, as there's a lot of detail in place as to how such an illustrious team was able to get so much so wrong. The book misses the mark in a way because it simply accepts the Obama team's arguments regarding how to deal with the crisis uncritically, never thinking for a moment that they may have been wrong from the start with the how. Instead, we get a sympathetic viewpoint of the team, the Republican opposition is almost always a bit of a caricature, and the end result is one that misses what may have been a more informative book in favor of one that promotes a certain ideological viewpoint.

There are flashes of good journalism in this book, for sure - the discussions of Christina Romer and Tim Geithner were both top notch, and the debt ceiling recap did show some surprising fidelity to what's known, but the rest felt lacking.

[Jeff Hauser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent--lucid, well-informed, and gets at the failure of the Obama team to rethink their political or economic worldview in light of the collapse of any reason to believe that the post-1970 growth in financial sector was a good thing for America.

If anything, I wish the book were longer, but for what it covers... the degree of sophistication on politics and economics is unmatched among recent treatments of DC. And impressively up to date through late 2011 for a book published in February or so....

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting, based on the title, the author to make the case on what the Obama team did wrong, and what would have produce better results. Instead, the book is mostly a biography of the Obama economic team - cataloging their experiences and eccentricities - rather than an argument for why the administration failed or what the political realities would have allowed it to do differently.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a very good book. It's written in an easy to understand format and has a good balance between economics and politics. It's nice to read a economics book that challenges the typical "Beltway Establishment" view of economics.

[Matt Zeitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm thanked in the acknowledgements, so obviously this is the greatest book about the Obama administration ever written. Scratch that. Greatest book ever written.

[Ryan Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting read about Obama in office and how he conquered.

[Steven H · Rating 3 out of 5]

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S HANDLING OF THE RECESSION

Noam Scheiber is a senior editor of the New Republic, and a fellow for the New America Foundation. He wrote in this 2011 book that economic adviser Lawrence Summers' stimulus recommendation "didn't reflect what he deemed the best course of action for the economy---that would have been well over $1 trillion. It reflected what he deemed the best course that was politically feasible. Yet because (Rahm) Emanuel and the president assumed Summers was largely giving them the former, they believed they were closer to the ideal than they actually were." (Pg. 62)

He observes that in January 2009, "the president-elect made his first pilgrimage to the Hill to meet with both parties' leaders... Obama was making huge concessions before the negotiations had even started... The practical effect of Obama's preemptive concession wasn't to defuse the GOP's criticism, but to redirect it elsewhere... Obama's bipartisanship was already looking uncomfortably one-sided." (Pg. 100-101)

He suggests that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's actions "probably saved the financial system... But the hatching of these bailout schemes was also an incestuous, cringe-producing affair... while Geithner's bias was to see the world through the eyes of large financial institutions, this was forgivable during a crisis... The real problem was that he applied the same approach to the daily hustle of minding the banks." (Pg. 208-209) He laments, "in the end, there was no bailout (for homeowners)... The administration worried too much about the dreadful politics... Yet as terrible as a trillion-dollar housing bailout was politically, it wasn't as bad as 9 percent unemployment and a stagnant economy for the rest of the president's term." (Pg. 242)

He argues, "(House Speaker John) Boehner presided over a roster of House memberswsho subscribed to a radically different antigovernment ideology and deemed even the smallest compromise with the president an act of betrayal... The question was whether Obama and the Tea Partiers could do business. And the answer to that was almost certainly no." (Pg. 259-260)

He concludes, "the Republicans had maneuvered Obama into a position in which he granted them a large concession (raising the debt ceiling...) In return ... they demanded many more concessions---in the form of large cuts to spending... It was the failure to spend more money in the short term that was costing jobs and damaging the economy. By agreeing that deficits were the biggest threats to the economy, the president gave credence to the fallacious argument that cutting breeds prosperity..." (Pg. 280-281)

This is a fascinating and insightful critique of the Obama administration's handling of the fiscal crisis and its aftermath, and is more compelling since it was written by a progressive.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This particular re-telling of the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency is fixated on the American mandarin class that has always occupied and administered the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. At some level, because this is such a boring approach, it makes complete sense in this context to pass along the tidbit that Larry Summers’ insider-knowledge encompasses knowing where a senior official should sit in a sedan, but it also isn’t terribly interesting. This is, perhaps, an unavoidable outcome because the American mandarins are tedious. Technocrats with pedigree serve a conventional wisdom that effectively limits the imagination of our ruling bureaucracy. When that conventional wisdom conflicts with common sense or lived experience, the American mandarins respond with their disdain for basic democratic principles, with being questioned, with being governed.

Indeed, in this depressing deep dive into our mandarin class, there isn’t any indication that any of the insiders who speak to Scheiber are in the slightest bit interested in challenging their assumptions. To wit, Sheila Bair, one of the only interesting people mentioned in the book, is a four-page sideshow, dismissed as a misguided bureaucrat interested primarily in expanding the FDIC’s authority. This didn’t ring true a dozen years ago and it certainly hasn’t aged well.

It is difficult to read this book without focusing on what is missing. To be certain, there are a lot of dumb ideas discussed ad nauseum in Scheiber’s story. And, yet, even with all of the Clinton re-treads profiled and spoken to, there is not a single mention or utterance of the words Glass-Steagall in the text. Given the opposition of the Obama Administration to a law that acted as a safeguard in the operation of banks for well-over half a century before the Clinton Administration saw to its removal – and Secretary Geithner’s active opposition to proposals for re-enactment – the possible return of that law seems relevant to understanding this particular group’s remarkable commitment to bad policy. But it isn’t mentioned, because this book is not about policy or the process of creating policy. It is about what incredibly dull people do in the shadows. Spoiler: they are dull.

[Tim Strotman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book about how Obama's economic team tackled the recovery. Schreiber immediately states his viewpoint, "they blew it", but then offers a nuanced, respectful story about what took place. He writes sketches of many of the important team members, describes the policy and political issues that influenced the decisions, and then sets it in the time frame that existed, emergency and partisan politics. It shouldn't be your bible for understanding this important historical episode, but it is a valuable asset to understanding what was going on.

[Stefan · Rating 3 out of 5]

By nature of its timing, the book closes somewhat uninspiringly on the notion that economic policy success is, on top of all other obstacles, simply at the whim of political tides. Otherwise, a good introduction to the cast and an entertaining, if topically frustrating, read.

[Cora · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the subtitle suggests, Scheiber offers a skeptic's take of Obama's first three years in office. He argues that while Obama may have prevented a second Great Depression, he made a series of preventable mistakes and political miscalculations that prevented the economy from truly recovering. Scheiber is too good of a reporter to offer a simple narrative of good guys and bad guys, but he provides a compelling portrait of a Democratic establishment divided by a financial crisis that their fundamental conceptions of the economy. The Clinton administration's emphasis on financial deregulation, partnership with Wall Street, and balanced budgets could not have been less appropriate to the economic conditions of the last four years, but not everybody in the Obama administration understood that. That confusion led Obama to adopt the rhetoric of austerity when the economy truly required additional stimulus, and got him stuck in an unnecessary debt ceiling fight.

However, Scheiber falls prey to the myth of the bully pulpit, repeatedly asserting that Obama could have achieved major goals by taking his case directly to the people. Historically, though, presidential rhetoric rarely moves public opinion. FDR launched an ambitious campaign on behalf of his court packing plan, and for his trouble got six years of congressional deadlock. Reagan was known as the Great Communicator, but public opinion generally got less conservative during his administration. And Obama was generally stymied by Republicans, or by Democrats representing Republican districts, people who might actually welcome a public fight with the president to aid in their own re-election.

Another question, whether Obama could have gotten more stimulus by making a higher opening bid to Congress in the first place, strikes me as basically unknowable. Perhaps the moderates would have mindlessly given the stimulus a haircut no matter what, but perhaps they would have sticker shock and torpedoed the deal. Collins, Snowe and Specter were all at the business end of an intense lobbying campaign from other Republicans, after all.

Also, while Obama's stumbles during the debt ceiling fight do not cover him in glory, Scheiber's take is a little more negative than my own. Per Michael Grunwald, Obama managed to get $700 billion in stimulus past Republicans in the last two years, while ensuring that whoever is elected President this November will have massive leverage when negotiating an end to the fiscal cliff. It's a high risk strategy--Mitt Romney could well win, although at the moment that seems unlikely--but one that sets up a re-elected Obama to score a major victory on the budget going forward.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well researched book about the Obama economic team. After seeing Timothy Geitner on The Daily Show last night, I can better understand some of the disruptions within this segment of the administration.
I really appreciated the author's notation of the electorate unfortunately misunderstanding the juxtaposition of the release of TARP funds followed by a deepening recession. The two were not contingent on the other. In fact, TARP funds were too few to solve the problems which Obama inherited according to the author.
If you like the behind the scenes book, this was very interesting even though it doesn't always play to my views.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy reading, paints informative and colorful picture of key Obama Administration economic aides struggling with the financial drama of the first term. Geithner, Summers, Romer, and lesser known experts come alive. I hurried to finish the book before the 2012 election because I feared it would become out of date. Lo and behold, the faces and the issues are still with us. I recommend the book to Washington junkies, students of politics and personalities, and those interested in economic policy.

[Ashley Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book about Obama's economic team. I bought some of the arguments Scheiber makes (Obama should have appealed to voters, shouldn't have expected republicans to bargain bc they didn't time and again, Geithner's buddy-ness with banks was asset during crisis and draw-back during regulation setting time). Some of the arguments are more of "well, we never will know" type arguments (was stimulus too small? COULD Obama have gotten a bigger stimulus? should he have leveraged tax cuts for increasing spending limits?) Interesting primer to the inner-workings of the econ team.

[E. Scott Harvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noam is a good writer and I appreciate the inside insights he reveals in this book. And yet, I fundementally disagree with Noam's overall economic philosphy. Once again it's not a matter of intelligence but worldview. Noam is a bright guy, no doubt about it. But we fundamentally see the world different and therefore come to very different conclusions as to what works economically. VIVA REAGAN!!

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

You'll learn something new on Obama's economic team on how they contributed and what they didn't contribute to the economic crisis. Just like you see in the news, there is a huge political tug of war not only in Obama's own party, but the opposing party as well. The biographies on Obama's economic team members is what makes this book worth reading in my opinion.

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. And super factually correct.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accessible and engaging analysis of the Obama administration's economic policies. It was both illuminating and infuriating.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

How can this ragtag gang be so inept?????????

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't really learn anything new about the 2008 financial crisis or the politics surrounding it.

[Mof · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another kiss and tell.

[João Caetano Leite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelent!

[Gregg Puluka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meticulously detailed the author has a clear command and incite over the material and time period. Unfortunately he chose to write in a pretentious style using metaphors over and over again that seemed more aimed at displaying his knowledge than explaining the material. This lay reader had to go over some of the material more than once before I understood the point. I was kinda bummed because Noam is a journalist and usually newspaper pieces are aimed at the lay reader.

The actor who read the audio book has a great voice but chose to read the entire book in this sort of doom and gloom tone which was hard to listen to for extended periods.

Definatly worth the time to read or listen too as it provides invaluable incite over the whole financial period. Having lived through that time and lost so much net worth and witnessed so many good people become unemployed I did wonder why it appeared as if the entire government was not helping to alleviate the situation better. The infighting, lack of focus and inability of all these bright people come to the aid of our country's workers clearly set the landscape for the chapter we are now living in.