Jeffery Charles Vogel

Decoding Press Coverage of the President's Fannie/Freddie Reform ...

Since leaving the White House, I have written a number of articles intended to illuminate various substantive aspects of our ongoing economic policy debates. At the same time, I am often reminded that it’s just as important to help further public understanding of the process by which economic policies are discussed and decided. Certain aspects of these processes ultimately become second-nature to participants in Congress and in the White House, to the point where they simply stop thinking about them. We thus have a tendency to forget that not everyone observing from the outside is as acclimated to these process norms, and that they are worth explaining every once in a while.

A classic example of how D.C. insiders learn to interpret news reports can be gleaned from examining a recent front-page article in the Washington Post . The gist of the article was to report that President Obama had “directed a small team of advisors to develop a proposal that would keep the government playing a major role in the nation’s mortgage market.” The article was careful to note that a final policy had not been determined, but gave the clear impression that President Obama was leaning toward making only very minor changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, preserving their essential missions (if not their names) and not fundamentally restructuring them other than to apply tighter regulatory controls and to wind down their investment portfolios.

It’s not standard practice for a White House to go public with a policy until it’s been fully decided upon. One important job of the White House staff, after all, is to preserve the president’s flexibility until he can make a final decision. If word of a possible decision gets out before the president has had that chance, it usually means one of a few things: It could be a trial balloon authorized from the top – that is, a deliberate testing of public reaction to inform a final decision. Or, it could simply be a leak: perhaps a lower-level departmental attendee of a meeting has shared information with the press about the trend of the deliberative process, without the approval of senior White House staff. Or, it could simply be a mistake; either the reporter or other individuals have read more into the policy development process than is actually yet there.

Entertainment Industry Economics, A Guide for Financial Analysis

The science of success, how market-based management built the world's largest private company

On the origin of species by means of natural selection or The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life

Ray Charles, man and music

Charles and Emma, The Darwins' Leap of Faith