Frank Kogan

skyecaptain alerts me to the following:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/04/thinkfast-march-4-2009/

And finally: OMB Director Peter Orszag quoted country music star Toby Keith in congressional testimony yesterday. "None of this is going to be easy," said Orszag before the House Budget Committee. "But as the country music singer Toby Keith once put it, 'There ain't no right way to do the wrong thing.'" Indeed, "the Princeton numbers-cruncher is a huge country fan and when he goes for runs that's what's in his iPod," reports ABC.

My brother is about to be hired at OMB* as a Senior Counselor To The Director "or some such title." Richard says that "senior" means that he's the oldest. The director-to-be,** Peter Orszag, is reported to be a country music fan - this from the New York Times of November 18, 2008:

In a June 2007 appearance on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," Mr. Orszag's paraphrase of a country star's hit song disarmed Mr. Dobbs, who was unsuccessfully pushing Mr. Orszag, as the Congressional Budget Office director, to validate his own views that illegal immigrants impose high costs on taxpayers. "Well, Lou, as Toby Keith would say, that's not how it is," Mr. Orszag said. The host, taken aback by the unlikely allusion from the bespectacled economist, replied, "You rock on, Mr. Director!"

(But Orszag wasn't paraphrasing the song, he was quoting it exactly. The title itself, not to mention the refrain, is "That's Not How It Is" - Toby's best song, by the way, though it was never a single, let alone a hit.)

Richard will work in the Old Executive Office Building, which is part of the White House aggregation of buildings (the White House is flanked by the Old Executive Office Building and the U.S. Treasury, with tunnels connecting them all). He says this probably means he can't wear blue jeans to the office or walk around in his socks at work.

I hope no one holds against him the ignorant things I say on this livejournal when I'm trying to understand economics.

*Office of Management and Budget.

**Orszag and a bunch of other cabinet nominees are slated to be confirmed this afternoon.

Freaky Trigger in digest form:

( Freaky Trigger on the boombox )