Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
Fact-based, data-driven research and analysis to advance democratic debate on vital issues shaping people’s lives.
Center for Economic and Policy Research
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW
Suite 400
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: 202-293-5380
Fax: 202-588-1356
https://cepr.net
The NYT ran a piece profiling Gene Sperling, the new head of President Obama’s National Economic Council (NEC), that could have been a paid advertisement. The piece completely ignores the economic imbalances that developed under the Clinton administration and hit their peaks during Sperling’s tenure as NEC head, most notably the stock bubble and trade deficit caused by an over-valued dollar.
The article gives Sperling credit for coming up with the idea of using the budget surpluses at the end of the Clinton years to “save Social Security,” which thereby prevented this money from being either spent or given back in tax cuts. It would have been worth noting that the surplus eventually disappeared as a result of the collapse of the stock bubble and the stimulus measures necessary to get the economy back on its feet.