Joe Biden has tapped Jared Bernstein as his chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

We think that a president should be entitled to whatever advisers he wants.

But it’s worth remembering that Jared Bernstein was the principal author of an infamous study at the start of the Obama administration which predicted that the Obama $500 billion “stimulus plan” would create 3.5 million “shovel ready” jobs.

Well, they were shoveling something, but it surely wasn’t jobs. Turns out the Obama stimulus was one of the great economic flops of all time. On net, not a single new job was created. Instead of 35 million new jobs, after two years, the economy LOST 1.1 million jobs. And instead of the unemployment rate falling to 5.0%, as Bernstein predicted, the rate stayed above 8% for well over two years. (People have forgotten how rotten Obama’s economic performance was.)

In fact, unemployment even turned out to be higher with the stimulus plan than Bernstein had estimated it would be WITHOUT the stimulus plan.

Bernstein was also one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Biden Build Back Better Bill and the $2 trillion American Recovery Act. Those didn’t stimulate the economy either – the economy has grown at 1.1% over the past six quarters – but they did stimulate inflation and debt.

Washington is one of the few places on earth where the more you are wrong, the more you get promoted to higher and more exalted positions.