McCain's Brain Trust

Douglas Holtz-Eakin has been long active in public policy, serving as chief economist for the president's Council of Economic Advisers and director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). His academic research has tended to focus on the effect of taxes. While at the CBO, he introduced "dynamic analysis," a way of examining how changes in taxes affected overall economic growth as well as consumer and business behavior. The CBO under Holtz-Eakin delivered a series of thorough reports on the costs of the Iraq war, recruitment and retention challenges for the Army, and the mounting costs of replacing and repairing military equipment in Iraq.

As head of CFR's Center for Geoeconomic Studies, Holtz-Eakin expressed concern at Congress's reaction to the Dubai Ports World purchase of operations at a number of U.S. ports. He urged prudent reforms of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, warning against protectionism for the sake of national security. He has also talked increasingly about the virtues of a cap-and-trade policy that curbs greenhouse gas emissions and observes free market practices.

John B. Taylor is a Stanford economist known for devising the Taylor Rule, a guideline for monetary policymakers on how to set short-term interest rates as economic conditions change. As Treasury undersecretary for international affairs from 2001 to 2005 he was on the front line of some major efforts in financial diplomacy. They included efforts to guide Argentina after its massive debt default. Taylor later wrote in an April 2006 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal: "We should steer clear of a new interventionism and instead concentrate on improving the IMF's new advisory role."Taylor was also charged with pressing China to move toward floating its currency so it would appreciate, thereby easing the U.S. trade deficit with China. He wrote in a 2005 Hoover Digest article of the importance of avoiding "isolationist legislation" and encouraging "rational policy decisions—rather than hysterical China-bashing—on important foreign investment issues such as the recently withdrawn CNOOC bid for Unocal."

Kenneth Rogoff is a Harvard economist and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as chief economist and director of research for the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003. In a 2003 article in Foreign Policy, Rogoff issued a defense of the fund, writing "Blaming the IMF for the reality that every country must confront its budget constraints is like blaming the fund for gravity." He said the IMF still has a role in the changing global financial environment, chiefly as a global economic forum. "The current patchwork system of exchange rates seems too unstable to survive into the 22nd century.

How will the world make the transition toward a more stable, coherent system? That is a global problem, and dealing with it requires a global perspective the IMF can help provide," he wrote. He has also called for financially restructuring the World Bank as a grant-making agency rather than as a bank, pointing to the "absurdity" of making loans to countries like Russia and China, "both of whom have hoards of reserves and extensive access to private markets"

© 2008