What Can Make Barack Obama's Economic Ideas Look Almost Appealing?

Matt Welch | June 17, 2008

A Naomi Klein attack essay, that's what!

Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."

Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." [...]

Obama--who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade--is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.

He chose as his chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist on the left side of a spectrum that stops at the center-right. [...]

[B]efore Obama can purge Washington of the scourge of Friedmanism, he has some ideological housecleaning of his own to do.

Hat tip to Terry Michael; reason on Naomi Klein here.