The Escape Artists

A star White House journalist provides a gripping look inside the meeting rooms, the in-boxes, and the super-sharp minds of the pedigreed propeller heads who attempted to guide President Obama out of a global economic crisis. Deeply sourced within Obama’s economic team, Noam Scheiber is uniquely qualified to profile the squad of elite administration insiders who have set and managed the president’s economic policies from before the start of his term in office, through the crisis, and into our current prolonged recovery. These are people we know—or think we know: Obama, Geithner, Summers, Orszag, and a host of others.

Scheiber shares his profound understanding of each member of the group, examining how they work—or don’t work—as a team, peeling back the layers of each personality while revealing the pragmatism, vision, and blind spots each has in the fight to resurrect the American economy. Along the way, he sorts out the truth from the myths and the tactical finger-pointing that surround the recent worldwide financial meltdown.

Here, egos compete, personalities clash, and ideas do battle. Never before have we seen such a crystal-clear, in-depth look at the way economic power is wielded at the highest levels in our nation—in Washington, on Wall Street, and in their effects on millions of households in America.

This book will become the key to understanding whether the Obama team will succeed in bringing us back from the brink of economic ruin—or whether they have set us up for another crisis.