Obama administration

Obama Administration Refuses To Call Out China on Currency Manipulation Yet Again

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Once again the Obama administration refuses to label China a currency manipulator. This is when the U.S.-China trade deficit looks on target to hit $300 billion and China just slapped the United States with a unjustified 22% additional tariff on American SUVs.

In the U.S. Treasury's Semi-Annual Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies, team Geithner and the Obama administration literally refuse to label China a currency manipulator in spite of overwhelming evidence.

The Report highlights the need for greater exchange rate flexibility, most notably by China, but also in other major economies. Based on the ongoing appreciation of the RMB against the dollar since June 2010, the decline in China's current account surplus, and China's official commitments at the G-20, APEC, and the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) that it will move more rapidly toward exchange rate flexibility, Treasury has concluded that the standards identified in Section 3004 of the Act during the period covered in this Report have not been met with respect to China. Nonetheless, the movement of the RMB to date is insufficient. Treasury will closely monitor the pace of RMB appreciation and press for policy changes that yield greater exchange rate flexibility, a level playing field, and a sustained shift to domestic demand-led growth.

This is Just Too Much

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Huffington Post is reporting the leading candidate for Obama's Economic council chief, made millions from Wall Street, significant consulting fees from Goldman Sachs, while we experienced economic Armageddon.

Gene Sperling, a leading contender for a top economic post in the White House, made millions on Wall Street even as the economy faltered.

The adviser to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is near the top of President Barack Obama's list of candidates to replace Larry Summers as director of the National Economic Council, HuffPost reports. By appointing Sperling, the president would fuel perceptions that his administration is overly close to Wall Street, installing a policymaker who has not only overseen monumental deregulation of the financial sector, but has also collected hefty paychecks from its leading firms.

The next NEC director will help determine the administration's economic policy over the next two years. Summers, who last week left his White House post for a Harvard professorship, met with the president almost daily to discuss economic decisions. Long sympathetic to Wall Street interests, Summers pushed for deregulation of financial instruments under President Clinton, a policy that experts -- and Clinton himself -- now say was misguided, contributing to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Even worse, Sperling is a Rubinite. This is the same bad trade deals, the same lack of financial regulation which has lead us to where we are today. With anemic economic growth, no jobs and an unemployment rate that just isn't dropping.

Elizabeth Warren in Obama Administration, Friend or Foe?

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Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? It appears either the Obama administration is doing a run around Congress or possibly muzzling Elizabeth Warren. Warren has been strongly desired to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Supposedly it would be difficult to get her confirmed in Congress. The Obama administration is hiring Elizabeth Warren as an assistant to the President, to de facto run the Consumer Financial Protection Agency claims The New York Times:

Elizabeth Warren, who conceived of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will oversee its establishment as an assistant to President Obama, an official briefed on the decision said Wednesday evening.

The decision, which Mr. Obama is to announce this week, would allow Ms. Warren, a Harvard law professor, to effectively run the new agency without having to go through a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the Senate. The creation of the bureau is a centerpiece of the Wall Street financial overhaul that Mr. Obama signed in July.

The Obama Administration is Training Offshore Foreign Workers to Take your Job

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If this doesn't get your blood boiling then you're dead. The Obama administration is spending $36 million dollars to train foreign workers in foreign countries for skills needed to offshore outsource your job. I'm not making this up. $36 million dollars to educate foreign workers, when the U.S. unemployment rate is at crisis levels. Our government is paying for education, classes and training so foreigners can get the skills needed to do American jobs.

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.

Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.

USAID is contributing about $10 million to the effort, while its private partners are investing roughly $26 million.

Ron Bloom to be new Obama Manufacturing Adviser

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The Obama administration has appointed Ron Bloom to be the new manufacturing adviser. He was head of the auto bail out task force.

Most interesting is he worked for the United Steelworkers Union, but has our classic Harvard MBA.

Since February, Mr. Bloom has been a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. He sits on the president’s automotive industry task force. The White House said Mr. Bloom would continue that position and would expand his role to coordinate the administration’s manufacturing policy with the Commerce, Treasury, Energy and Labor departments.

The White House said Mr. Bloom would work with the National Economic Council to help lead policy development and strategic planning for “the president’s agenda to revitalize the manufacturing sector.”

Obama "Fast Tracks" Offshore Outsourcing

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Remember all of that rhetoric on the campaign trail about outsourcing and trade agreements?

Guess what the Obama administration is doing? Fast Tracking Trade with the most common landing place for your job, India.

The United States has announced a new programme to fast-track high-technology trade with India from which General Electric's India division will be the first Indian company to benefit.

"This is an important step in enabling a more rapid and efficient flow of sensitive technology between India and the United States," US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke announced at the US-India Business Council's 34th Anniversary "Synergies Summit" Wednesday.

"This is an important step in enabling a more rapid and efficient flow of sensitive technology between India and the United States," Locke said.

The Spin is In (not)

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An Op-Ed in Sundays New York TimesThe Economy Is Still at the Brink really calls out what is so wrong with politics generally.

Isn't not the public relations man, it's the policy

Mr. Obama thinks that the way to revive the economy is to restore confidence in it. If the mood is right, the capital will flow. But this belief is dangerously misguided. We are sympathetic to the extraordinary challenge the president faces, but if we’ve learned anything at all two years into the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, it is that a capital-markets system this dependent on public confidence is a shockingly inadequate foundation upon which to rest our economy.

Vivek Kundra for Obama "CTO" position

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It appears Vivek Kundra will be the new CTO but also the position might be moved to be under the House Science Committee.

The Obama administration plans to announce it has appointed Vivek Kundra, the District of Columbia's chief technology officer to take the top information technology post in the federal government, according to a source.

Kundra, who has deployed advanced applications to improve the performance of public services during his nearly two years as CTO for the District, will replace Karen Evans as administrator for e-government and information technology in the Office of Management and Budget. The position effectively serves as the federal government's chief information officer. The administration could announce Kundra's appointment as soon as Thursday.

Kundra could not be reached, and a spokesman for Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty declined to comment.

Bill Richardson Withdraws Bid for Commerce Secretary

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Bill Richardson has withdrawn his bid to be commerce secretary.

Bill Richardson on Sunday announced that he was withdrawing his nomination to be President-elect Barack Obama's commerce secretary amid a grand jury investigation into how some of his political donors won a lucrative state contract

Obama has already accepted this decision.

Bill Richardson thought U.S. trade policy was just great, supported NAFTA and also wanted to increase H-1B and other guest worker Visas.