Obama Nominates 'Crazy Eyes' Krueger as Top Economist

Remember that offensive cover from Newsweek showing Michelle Bachmann in such as unflattering way? I wonder if Obama's latest appointee will get the same treatment? Somehow I doubt it.

President Barack Obama on Monday plans to nominate Princeton University's Alan Krueger to be chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, a White House official said.

If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Krueger, a labor economist, is likely to provide a voice inside the administration for more-aggressive government action to bring down unemployment and, particularly, to address long-term joblessness.

Mr. Krueger, 50 years old, returned to Princeton a year ago after serving as assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy during the first two years of the Obama administration—which means he has recently cleared the sometimes treacherous Senate confirmation process.

He would succeed Austan Goolsbee, who left earlier this month to reclaim his teaching post at the University of Chicago.

Mr. Krueger has been on Princeton's faculty since 1987, the year he earned his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He did a stint as chief economist at the Labor Department during the Clinton administration.

The work he has done in academia ranges from attempts to explain why job growth wasn't stronger during the 2000s, to findings that increases in the minimum wage don't depress employment, to a work showing that terrorists often come from middle-class—and often college-educated—backgrounds.

While at Treasury, Mr. Krueger worked on analyses of a variety of programs, including tax incentives to encourage employers to hire the employed, the "cash for clunkers" initiative to jump-start auto purchases and Build America taxable municipal bonds.

Ah yes, "cash for clunkers," one of those famed Obama economic strategies.