634. “Fault-Finder Is a Minimum-Wage Job”

I first met the economist Austin Goolsby around 20 years ago. I was out at the University of Chicago spending time with another Chicago economist, Steve Levitt, who had become my free economics friend and co-author. Levitt could be shy and soft-spoken. Goolsby was neither.

He was a former debate champion. He had done improvisational comedy. In fact, Goolsby did a lot of things that most economics professors didn't do. So I guess I didn't see him as a heavyweight exactly. If you had told me back then that Goolby would go on to run the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama White House, which he did,

and that he would become president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which is his current job, I would have thought you had the wrong guy. But plainly I'm the one who was wrong. Goolsby has always been considered a top-tier academic researcher and professor. Temperamentally, he's a hardcore empiricist, but he also has strong opinions. And so, as the Trump White House embarks on an aggressive overhaul of economic policy,

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