Larry, Curly and Moe?

Krugman sighs:

It’s a bit disappointing to see the Obama administration engaging in this sort of market-worship — hailing markets as a Good Thing in themselves, rather than as an often but not always useful means to an end. But I have reason to think that unlike the Bushies, they don’t really believe it; it’s just politics. Which is actually better than having genuine market fanatics running things, I guess.

Now there's some serious damning with faint praise.

And Ezra wishes the Obama econ team would open up the tent to some prominent dissenters.

You could argue, I guess, that Stiglitz and Krugman have uniquely bad personal relationships with the administration, and so their experience shouldn't be generalized. (Stiglitz has a longtime feud with Summers and Krugman's war with the Obama team dates back to the primary, when they stupidly tried to release an attack document discrediting the good professor.) But it would be nice if some prominent expert dissenter were being given the access and respect that's apportioned to, say, David Brooks. I'd really like to read the ultimate conclusions of a knowledgeable skeptic who'd been able to test his arguments against the Obama administration's thinking on these questions. But instead it's just been a lot of opaque briefings that misrepresent the points of the critics. Which in turn pisses the critics off. Which in turn seems to compel the White House to freeze them out further. Which in turn...

Which I don't disagree with, but which I also don't know to be true. While Summers is certainly known for plowing over dissent, Obama isn't. I don't think the president is simply nodding his head as Summers pontificates each morning. I can't imagine he's not doing a little reading himself and challenging Summers' and Geithner's assumptions. He has surrounded himself with a lot of smart, opinionated people (even Berkeley professors!) and has Paul Volcker on speed dial. I can't imagine they are all in lock-step with Summers and Geithner.