Change, Change, Change

Brad Delong wonders how the Obama administration will cope with a very heavy agenda:

The Obama administration is going to be rebuilding and reconstructing five major sectors of the American t. It has no choice--there is no other option. It has to remake:

• Autos
• Housing finance
• High finance
• Energy
• And the big one—health care

On what principles and through what procedures is this extraordinary exercise in structural economic reform policy going to be accomplished? I get how to do the macroeconomics of Obama administration economic policy. I don’t get how to do the structural side…

What strikes me about this list is that the last two are clearly policy areas where PE Obama really wants to have a major impact. The other three items are merely things he will have to deal with and I don't think they are topics Obama ever wanted to get very familiar with. Of course, reforming any one of these three areas would be a huge undertaking on its own.

Getting health care reform done would have been a major accomplishment, regardless of how you feel about his proposals, but now he has to do that on top of everything else. (HT)