Obama Critics to Appear at Joint Economic Committee

Update: See Too Much To Handle? Why I expect Obama's poll numbers to plummet soon at TNR by John Judis.

Via Robert Kuttner:

'Part of the Way with LBJ'
- Students for a Democratic Society button, circa 1964

The Joint Economic Committee (JEC) hearing next Tuesday (May 19) will feature testimony from leading critics that one hopes will highlight the 'absurdity of the Summers/Geithner approach (to the financial crisis) and help animate skepticism in the media, the public, and eventually the President.'

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz; former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, whose recent piece in the Atlantic Monthly compared the US to third-world kleptocracies, and Thomas Hoenig, the most outspokenly critical of the regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents (are scheduled to appear before the committee).

The JEC is a "bicameral Congressional Committee composed of ten members from ... the Senate and the House of Representatives. ... Its main purpose is to make a continuing study of matters relating to the US economy."

Suffice it to say that Obama does not deserve and has not earned the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy, the financial crisis, civil rights for gays, transparency, well anything.