It's very hard in this case to evaluate the Obama economic team on the basis of economics, because they have literally passed nothing other than the stimulus package. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supported the stimulus. We didn't like the composition of it, but it has helped. On that kind of thing you give him a C for putting together and getting a package through, though it wasn't by any stretch an ideal package.
If you look at the housing market, they've put through all kinds of loan modification programs and those have pretty much failed. They haven't addressed fundamental problem of disappearing capital in the housing market. Therefore that hasn't worked. The stuff that's been done with regard to capital markets and credit markets has been more the purview of the Fed, like the TALF program [Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility]. It's the Fed that gets the high marks on that. I haven't seen much done by Obama administration that's addressed capital markets except to get out of the way.
When I look at other areas in the economy, I think their tax policy will be a disaster, and their budget proposals are jaw dropping. The types of budget deficits he would run, the amount of government debt he would propose is staggering and would stagger the economy if they were allowed to be implemented. We can't function in a good sense with debt levels in the 60% to 80% debt-to-GDP range. These are numbers that are beyond the pale.
NEXT: Jeffrey Frankel: Obama 'willing to fight the fight'
