| Jason Furman | Why everyone is wrong about the economy

I have my own thoughts, but Furman is still a big booster for neoliberal economics voters from both sides have begun to violently reject. He's probably the most consistent among Expert Economists you'll see quoted in the news.

Former Obama administration economic adviser Jason Furman explains why both major parties have abandoned economic reality in favor of political fantasy.



‬0:00— Introduction
0:48— Failure of Bidenomics & the 'neoliberal delusion'
6:00— The neoliberal coalition breakdown
9:37— Trump's post-neoliberal economics
13:08— Biden's biggest economic failures
16:25— Why 'free money' is a bad thing
18:28— The Age of No Accountability
20:19— Why tariffs make no sense
23:52— How Furman 'zigzagged' on debt
29:42— How to get politicians to take the debt seriously
36:32— How to fix social security and Medicare
39:58— Has Furman changed his mind about Keynesian economics?
43:10— Furman's background and the future of Economics
46:50— Furman's outlook on AI
50:16— The Luddite impulse towards technological advancement
Today's guest is Harvard economist Jason Furman, who was one of former President Barack Obama's chief economic advisers and an architect of the Affordable Care Act. These days, he's in the news for his withering critique of former President Joe Biden's dismal economic record and two-fisted attacks on President Donald Trump's trade policy. We talk about Furman's defense of global markets, Obamacare's unfulfilled promises, and why he now thinks the national debt and AI are bigger deals than he used to believe.

 

Oh my...dickriding for First! status.

Who knew the D&D would devolve into a Youtube comments section?

 

My confidence for Bassent has lowered a bit. He called out Yellen's policies during his confirmation hearing, but ended up doing the same thing on a larger scale.

Maybe my confidence will skyrocket if Chief Navarro is permanently shitcanned from Washington (doubtful).

Start here: 23:52— How Furman 'zigzagged' on debt'

The interviewer grills him about that shift from the Obama years, and now Furman says he's more skeptical about debt to GDP ratios as an indicator and more concerned about our current rate environment influencing our enormous debt.

This is where Furman's views are bit Ivory Tower-ish. Gillespie, following Reason's own biases, didn't/won't ask about what to do directly with the situation where top 10% is responsible for a little over 50% domestic consumption and props up the economy by extension.

We're deep in our current situation because we've been heavily financialized and primed for moral hazard even before the GFC. Everyone knows its unsustainable, but now it's a thing where Fannie and Freddie hold all the MBS and we're all on the hook if housing suffers another 06-07 fizzle. Conditions are different but the financial "innovations" that got us there are still around.

 

I didn't pay attention to furman's role in the Obama admin, but they and Bernanke ran it up in order to prevent Great Depression like death spirals from seeping into the American psyche. If SNAP or whatever debit cards/food stamps were available at the time weren't around, we'd have similar bread lines for families needing aid.

So what he said initially during those years was an implicit blessing for our current over financialized bigly rigged norms. It's fine and dandy to say "Well we were worried about deflation...we dint kno inflation wud pik up." when you dress it up with fancy words.

Economists like him gave handcuffed policymakers a tool to hack the system and become surprised or zigzaggers years later when different policymakers abused the tool to the point of breaking or damaging the system and our credibility.

I've been looking deeper into the people who are running Trump's show since the Miran paper, and it appears there's at least 5 freaking camps each with their own tariff agenda. https://www.independent.org/article/2025/04/11/the-nonsense-of-the-tariff-men/

Bessent wasn't included in that article, though I think he's likely more aligned with Miren than Howard Lunatic who wanted the Treasury position. There was also an unconfirmed leak that claimed Bassent wanted a Fed position.

So I don't know. It's only been 3 months and he has the rest of his term to clean that up AND claw back some progress they all initially planned.

God speed for him and the rest of us.

There's a similar sentiment in this thread https://bbs.clutchfans.net/threads/the-state-of-higher-education.318360

I think the op/ed in this post touches on something that should be addressed. https://bbs.clutchfans.net/threads/the-state-of-higher-education.318360/page-7#post-15603822

It'll be interesting to see what writings Oren Cass will pump out with how bungled the tariff agenda has become. We definitely need legitimate China experts who read and speak Chinese at the white house rather than Looney Loomer or fossilized Navarro types who spread intolerance and FUD against those people's loyalties.

The government already knew about our supply chain and critical mineral vulnerabilities since post-covid, yet none of them assumed China "would go that far" even though they began restrictions in Dec 2024... Big ****ing oops.