Jason Furman is joining Barack Obama’s economic team. The Bloomberg story—tracking the press release?—hypes the fact that he is close to Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton (link).
Steve Clemons is not impressed (link). Clemons sees Furman, (the neo-Rubin?) as emblematic of a kind of neoliberalism that Clemons would like to see shunted aside.
As a card-carrying neoliberal, I'm happy to see Furman on board A while back I might have said that my choice for president would be: anybody who would listen to Robert Rubin.
On the other hand—Rubin was on the board at CitiCorp last year when owned up to a $17 billion-ish loss (he stepped in as chairman last November; before that he was drawing $15 million a year plus use of a jet to serve as chairman of the executive committee—link). Did Rubin miss that meeting? Ws he out getting the coffee? There may be two good reasons for Obama not to showcase Furman’s intellectual ancestry here.
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