The President held an undisclosed meeting with liberal economists before a press conference where he blamed the “sanctimonious” left for their purity in the tax debate. The meeting included Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Alan Blinder and Robert Reich. It sounds pretty fascinating.

Krugman did not respond to a request to discuss the meeting, but he did write an op-ed today that at least came close to a response. The op-ed, much like the snippet above, talked about the enduring quality of free market fundamentalism, and that the reason these zombie ideas stay in the discourse is that people like the President try to accommodate them instead of refuting them.

Yesterday on Dylan Ratigan’s show, he asked Austan Goolsbee a question I submitted via Twitter. It’s something I’ve been asking here as well: how are you going to perpetuate the stimulative effect of this bill, when you have deficit hysteria breaking out in Washington and a new Tea Party caucus bound and determined to cut spending next year? Goolsbee’s answer made it seem like he never considered the question…

Public employees lose again.

In the expected “compromise” on the Bush tax cuts, there’s talk that Democrats would get a one-year extension of unemployment benefits, without offsets.

While debate rages in the United States on whether to allow George W. Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans to expire, Hillary Clinton spoke Thursday in Brussels before a planned Friday meeting of “Friends of Democratic Pakistan”, calling for Pakistan to expand its tax base. Clinton’s call for Pakistan to force the rich to bear their fair share of the tax burden seems to be a message that the US should heed, as well.

Austan Goolsbee, the chief economist during the Presidential campaign and a member of the economic team currently, will become the new head of the Council of Economic Advisers, replacing Christina Romer. If Romer’s tenure on the CEA is any expectation, Goolsbee will spend his time there butting heads with Larry Summers and being stymied on getting his advice to the President.

The Sunday talk shows gave the impression that both sides are moving closer to agreement, but aren’t there yet. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Republicans block consideration of the bill when it gets a vote tonight. That doesn’t mean the bill dies, however; Republicans Sunday morning took pains to say they wanted a bill and just wanted to reach an agreement first before bringing it to the floor.

Yesterday featured yet another top official in the Obama Administration, this time economic advisor Austan Goolsbee, saying that unemployment is unacceptably high. In this case, he was talking about the minority community. But “unacceptably high” doesn’t make sense unless the Administration is doing whatever possible to drop that number. And what are they doing?