Glenn Hubbard - American Economist

Lately, the Obama administration has been talking up a proposal to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to knock down the barriers keeping underwater homeowners from refinancing their mortgages. Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard, who led the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, is calling for a more ambitious version of the program.

President Obama's plan to give the economy a short-term jolt, paid for in part by tax hikes on the rich, won't turn things around, a top economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney writes. In a column for Bloomberg News, Glenn Hubbard argues that the economy suffers from more fundamental problems, and lays out his own ideas to address them. A former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Bush, Hubbard would likely be in line for a top economic policy post should Romney be elected president. So Hubbard's list of proposals represents perhaps the most detailed blueprint we've yet seen of the economic principles that might guide a Romney administration.

Glenn Hubbard, the economic adviser to presidential candidate Mitt Romney, discusses the outlook of the U.S. Economy.

Watch the interview on CNN.com

Glenn Hubbard, Dean and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics, has been tapped to lead presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s economic policy team.

Romney announced the four-member team Tuesday in Las Vegas as part of the unveiling of his job-growth plan to help revive the US economy. Hubbard, who was chairman of former president George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote a foreword to Romney’s 160-page policy book, Believe in America, that outlines the plan: the plan calls for spending cuts; lowering the corporate tax rate; and eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains, and dividends.

“America needs to get its growth groove back. And getting it back is about not just incomes, but jobs as well,” Hubbard wrote. “To bring the unemployment rate back to its pre-financial-crisis level by the end of the next president’s first term would require real GDP growth averaging 4 percent per year over that period. That is an aggressive goal, but great progress can be made.”

Romney’s economic team also includes N. Gregory Mankiw, who was also a chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and is an economics professor at Harvard; former senator Jim Talent, a Heritage Foundation fellow; and former representative Vin Weber of Minnesota.

 "Streamlined Refinancing for up to 30 Million Borrowers" – Download pdf

With the 10-year Treasury rate near its lowest point since the Great Depression, there is a new opportunity for the Federal Government to implement a new economic stimulus program…helping over 30 million borrowers with government guaranteed mortgages at today's record-low rates. Under our plan, homeowners could save more than $70 billion per year in interest payments at no cost to the US Treasury. More than one-half of the savings would go to middle class households whose mortgages started at less than $200,000. Read more...