"Laser-Like Focus" = College-Style Bull Session

Many have complained that the President's prioritization of jobs as his #1 concern still didn't manage to bump it ahead of health care, energy, the environment, immigration, and stumping for his party's candidates. But occasionally, probably on a day when the weather's too sucky for golfing, the President actually sits down for a substantive discussion about the economy. So what happens when you bring Obama's "laser-like focus" together with his team of theoreticians?

Not very much.

The day before his party's shellacking in this month's elections, President Obama sat down with his economic team to examine the single most important issue for voters across the country: jobs.

But the question on the agenda was not how to accelerate the recovery or target job creation to the depressed Rust Belt. It wasn't even the challenge of how to persuade corporations to spend their cash piles on investments and jobs — although both have been extensively debated for many months. The president had called the meeting to grapple with what he and his propeller-head economists have been debating for some time: the wonkish question of whether today's high unemployment rate is structural or cyclical.

Get your act together, Mr. President. Do it now.

posted by Geoff at 01:33 PM

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