with Romney, wants to boost defense spending, perhaps pegging defense spending to a specific percentage of GDP regardless of rising or falling threats. Romney has suggested a peg of 4 percent of GDP, which would boost defense spending above current levels by another $100 billion, according to Time's Mark Thompson.

Back to the incumbents in the White House. One of the tensions around the president as economic policy proposals were being discussed in 2009 was a macro-economic, financial-sector revitalization track, which economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner advocated, and a package of combined initiatives including new regulations and micro-economic smart investments in key infrastructure projects advocated by Joe Biden's team, particularly Jared Bernstein as well as former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Obama campaign economic policyadviser Austan Goolsbee.



Early in the Obama Administration, the president favored the financial sector over infrastructure, housing, and other sectors where investments could create robust long-term returns for the economy. The auto sector and some of the president's investments in renewable energy projects are notable and important exceptions. On the whole, however, Obama and his team resuscitated a financial sector with only minor regulatory adjustments and, for the most part, allowed the failed management of bailed-out banks and financial houses to remain in place.



Within a year of Obama's financial-sector bailout, more than 5,000 employees at bailed-out firms were receiving bonuses of more than $1 million. While I'm sure that some of these folks have donated to Obama and the Democratic Party, one can assume that a majority of those