Alan Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton, and a man who had held important economic policy posts in each of the last two Democratic administrations, died on March 16, of suicide.
As I write, I do not know the means of suicide. I'm not sure if I should even be wondering why, or if the silence should be taken as a good thing, a giftless horse into whose mouth I should not look.
He was 58 years old.
His political views were standard-issue center-left. One of the facts that draw my attention, looking at some of the bio notice issued since his death, is: why was his time in the Obama administration so brief?
Krueger was named chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors in November 2011, three years after Obama's election. He left that office in August 2013. So he was there for less than two years out of an 8 year term. Then the President brought in Jason Furman instead. Was there a power-struggle story there that we in the general public have never been told about?
Just wondering. August 2013 was also the month that POTUS signed the Dodd-Frank Act, an important re-working of the regulatory system that governs Wall Street. The very fact that there was a changeover at the head office of the CEA at that moment suggests some possible connections: Krueger may have been unhappy that his boss was settling for what Krieger considered an insufficiently draconian reworking of that system.
I don't know nuttin', just speculatin'.
Krueger's family of course has my condolences on their loss.
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