Thread to discuss the early picks for Cabinet posts and Biden’s transition team. Here are the picks so far:
Secretary of state, Antony Blinken.
National security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen.
White House chief of staff, Ron Klain.
Presidential climate envoy, John Kerry.
Thoughts?
What do people think about Yellen?
I don’t have too many thoughts on these picks yet. Are any of these people seen as polarizing? I am hoping Biden doesn’t go down that path of making picks purposely to piss off the right.
Yellen, has experience as the fed chair. I don’t know enough about her policy to comment on how I think she will do.
Nope, not to my knowledge. I was hoping to put a thread up to steer towards policy critiques rather than election day drama and conspiracy theories since that’s pretty much done. All these people have TONS of experience.
I’m not sure what to think about Yellen - mostly because of my inexperience with monetary policy - so I’m hoping some people can chime in. She’s got experience but that also comes with some baggage
Rand Paul said we already had a Dem Treasury Sec the last 4 years, so what is the difference. And then bitched about massive GOP spending for years (l agree).
John Kerry is useless in any post. Yellen won’t be miles away from Mnuchin.
Good indicators that the people who feared the return of the Obama admin were right and the people who feared, or hoped for, a surge of socialist appointments were wrong
He closed the Iran Nuclear Deal. Having worked with Iranians, who, during regular business negotiations, on average every half an hour or so believe to have suffered an unforgivable affront to their honor and threaten to walk out, kill their interlocutors, kill themselves or a combination of all three, I have to say that Kerry commands great respect from my side in that regard.
I’ll defer to your experience in that regard. Kerry just gets my back up for reasons I cannot wholly explain, damnable WASP.
WASP? He isn’t Irish? County Kerry and all that?
You’d be forgiven for thinking so, but he’s half Austrian-Hungarian, half old money Bostonian.
He himself is nominally Catholic, however, but he’s a Yalee.
Edit: And when I say old money Bostonian, I mean Forbes family Bostonian.
Just checked Wikipedia - it seems his paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jews who converted to Catholicism.
Sounds disconcertingly familiar.
Interesting, his paternal Grandfather is reported to have chosen the name ‘Kerry’ from a map of Ireland, to avoid anti-semitism.
They don’t appear to cronies and/or syncophants…and appear to be individuals with experience…
After the last 4 years, that works for me…
(Quite frankly…the bar has been set pretty low at this point…)
Kerry was like British gentry - fsncy upbringing and no money, until he married a woman who inherited.
I think you might be right about Yellen. Mnuchin I never really disliked heavily, perhaps because he was the least dramatic of the admin officials or just never tabloid material.
Kerry reminds me of Treebeard somehow.
Goldman casts their vote of approval.
Is it the cloacal obsession?
Agree.
I’ve been curious how he was able to do two things: 1) avoid the shit-show, and 2) do it while not getting fired.
That’s a secret we may never know lol
Krugman’s opinion on Yellen.
I’m not sure how to take it… On one hand it’s Krugman, who has… very little away with me (to put it mildly). On the other hand he doesn’t have time to make any absurd arguments, and it’s really just a good overview of Yellen’s qualifications.
I think on balance it’s looking good.