Bush purges economic team

Well, it's Friday, time for the Administration to release any and all bad news it can in the hope it gets lost in the weekend clutter.

But this is just way too big -- admitting that his economic team was inept, Bush took out the two biggest members of his economic team, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey.

What's even more amazing is that there were no pretensions about "spending time with my family":

An administration official said O'Neill quit "at the request of the White House," making him the first Bush Cabinet official to leave. Less than an hour later, Lindsey, who is director of the National Economic Council, also tendered his resignation, which was more widely expected.

This was a good ol' fashioned firing. And it's not as if Bush really had an option.

The latest jobless data report is startling:

The U.S. unemployment rate shot up to 6 percent in November and employers hacked their payrolls by the largest amount since February, the government said on Friday in an surprisingly weak report that offered a troubling sign for the economy.

United is about to go bankrupt, and other airlines are likely to follow. Corporate layoffs continue unabated.

But of course, there's more to "doing something" than firing two of your top economic advisers. It'll be interesting to see where Bush goes from here.

Posted December 06, 2002 09:10 AM | Comments (67)