Good Enough For A Nobel; Not Good Enough For Richard Shelby

by Stuart Shapiro

The Royal Swedish Academy announced today that Peter Diamond and two others had won the Nobel Prize in Economics.  Diamond has been nominated by President Obama to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.  Nominated but not confirmed (h/t Susan Gardner).

But under an arcane procedural rule, the Senate sent Mr. Diamond’s nomination back to the White House on Thursday night before starting its summer recess. A leading Republican senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, said that Mr. Diamond did not have sufficiently broad macroeconomic experience to help run the central bank.

How much more evidence do we need that the confirmation process is deeply flawed and that the Republicans have no policy beyond frustrating the president?  Shelby is saying that Diamond does not have macroeconomic experience.  Diamond revolutionized our understanding of unemployment.  It doesn’t get much more macroeconomic than that.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.