User:Pictureprovince/Austan Goolsbee

Austan Dean Goolsbee (born August 18, 1969) is an American economist, currently serving as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the youngest member of the cabinet of President Barack Obama. Goolsbee is on leave from the University of Chicago where he is the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the Booth School of Business.

Early life and education
Goolsbee was born in Waco, Texas, the son of Linda Catherine (née Dean) and Arthur Leon Goolsbee. He was raised primarily in Whittier, California.

He graduated from Milton Academy and received both his B.A. summa cum laude and M.A. in economics from Yale University in 1991 and went on to receive his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2000–02) and Fulbright Scholar (2006–07).

At Yale, Goolsbee was a member of the Yale Political Union, the improv comedy troupe Just Add Water, Skull and Bones, and the Yale Debate Association. He and partner David Gray were named the APDA National Debate Team of the Year in 1991. He and partner Dahlia Lithwick were runners up for the award in 1990. As a high school student, Goolsbee won the national championship in extemporaneous speaking in 1987.

Academia
Goolsbee has been a Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Panel of Economic Advisors to the Congressional Budget Office. He served as Senior Economist to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). He is currently on leave from the University of Chicago where he is the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the Booth School of Business.

Goolsbee's academic research focuses on the Internet, the new economy, government policy, and taxes. He taught a class on economics and policy in the telecom, media and technology industries. He is known in political circles as a centrist and in academic circles as an empirical economist. He focuses on human activity in natural settings to find economic explanations for how people behave.

Goolsbee was an award winning journalist while serving as an academic. Goolsbee is the former host of the television show History's Business on the History Channel. In April 2006, Goolsbee began writing for the Economic Scene column in The New York Times. This column was later moved to Sundays and renamed the Economic View. Prior to this, he wrote the "Dismal Science" column for Slate.com, for which he won the 2006 Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism. He has published scores of papers in various peer-reviewed journals and books.

Support of Barack Obama's campaigns
He has been Barack Obama's economic advisor since Obama's successful U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois. He advised Barack Obama in his 2004 Senate race and was the senior economic advisor to the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.

During Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Goolsbee was alleged to have told Canadian consular officials in Chicago that Obama's political position on the North American Free Trade Agreement was "more reflective of political maneuvering than policy."

Service in Obama administration
Goolsbee was nominated by Obama to serve on the Council of Economic Advisers on his first day in office. Goolsbee was confirmed by the Senate on March 10, 2009. He concurrently served as chief economist at the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He was designated chair of the Council on September 10, 2010 succeeding Christina Romer.

In these capacities, Goolsbee has served as a media surrogate for the Obama Administration and his skill on television has been noted in the media.

On August 11, 2009, February 1, 2010, October 25, 2010 and February 24, 2011, Goolsbee appeared as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He also appeared in Daily Show segments on November 11, 2009 where he was interviewed by Josh Gad about whether the Cash for Clunkers program had ruined demolition derby and on March 17, 2009 where he said that executives at AIG deserved the "Nobel prize for evil". Jon Stewart described him as "Eliot Ness meets Milton Friedman". In 2009, he was voted the Funniest Celebrity in Washington. His latest practical joke was giving the departing White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel a dead fish. Emanuel has been known to give dead fish to political opponents. On June 15, 2009, he appeared as a guest on The Colbert Report. He made a second appearance on the Colbert Report on October, 13, 2010 where he defended Obama's tax cut policies which would allow tax breaks to expire for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year. Goolsbee's main arguments were that 98% of Americans would still receive a tax break under the Obama proposal and that the country would have to borrow money to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans if all tax breaks were extended.

In January, 2011, Goolsbee made numerous calls for congress to increase the 14.3 trillion dollar U.S. debt ceiling. Goolsbee said failure to do so could have a "catastrophic" impact on the U.S. economy. He also said that the Obama administration wanted to "juice" the economy to speed up the recovery.

Recognition
Over the years he has been named one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, one of the six "Gurus of the Future" by the Financial Times, one of the 40 Under 40 by Crain's Chicago Business, and one of the 30 Under 30 by the Chicago Sun-Times. He topped The New Yorker's list of the Ten Most Intriguing Political Personalities of 2010. Salon.com named him to its list of the 15 Sexiest Men of 2010.

Press profiles of him include those done by the New York Times, NPR, George Will, the Financial Times, Reuters TV, the Chicago Tribune,Crain's Chicago Business, and Politico.

Personal life
Goolsbee married Robin Winters on November 1, 1997. She was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company at the time and earlier the director of business development at MTV International. They have a daughter and two sons.