Keith Hennessey

Keith Hennessey, a top economic advisor in the Bush administration, had a front-row seat when the global financial crisis first hit. He joined the White House in 2002 and had the dubious luck of becoming director of the National Economic Council in November 2007 -- just in time to watch Lehman Brothers collapse and the United States descend into the worst recession since World War II.

After leaving the White House, Hennessey has used his policy expertise and popular to analyze and criticize Congress and the Obama administration. On July 15, Hennessey joined the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will deliver a report to Congress on the roots of the crisis next year. In this interview with Foreign Policy's Michael Wilkerson, Hennessey discusses the onset of the economic downturn and his concerns about Obama's economic policies, from stimulus money to reducing carbon emissions

Keith Hennessey: No. I took over at the very end of 2007. At that point the president's advisors thought that we were at risk of a mild recession in 2008 or maybe a slowdown. And in fact that's what we had up through the summer. 2008 was not an economic and financial crisis -- or we didn't feel the full effects of the crisis -- until the events of late summer [or] September. We thought 2008 was going to be a weak year economically but not a crisis year. At the time ... the size of what President Bush proposed was considered quite large. Because the economy was not in obvious and visible decline at that poin