Bush's economic cabal.

• Position: Off the News - Brief Article

Don't put much stock in any official economic organizational chart coming out of the Bush White House. In the Bush world, power in making economic policy depends not on your title, but on whether you are a member of the small, informal economic cabal that meets regularly with the President and decides virtually everything. Members of the cabal include Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and OMB Director Josh Bolten (with VP Dick Cheney lurking in the shadows). Not in the cabal? You might as well be working on the moon.

As an example of how this small team operates, the Council of Economic Advisors earlier this year produced its Annual Report to the President. Normally this document is passed around for months for comments before being publicly released. That may have happened again, but at the last minute...