Rep. Paul Ryan versus Goolsbee

For an academic, Goolsbee has a bad habit of either just following Democratic talking points or just making things up.  Points that I know he is sufficiently smart enough not to believe.  In the transcript below he has no problem attacking Romney for a company going under after Romney had left Bain,  and fails to acknowledge the inaccuracy of his attacks.  Ryan's comment was about the large portion of government money going to Obama supporters, not that all of it did.  Goolsbee's reference to a single McCain supporter is completely irrelevant.  The hope that "the Obama philosophy [is] to try to transform the government into only picking winners" is something that I can't believe Goolsbee believes.  How does it address the question of what is actually happening?  Why does Goolsbee believe that the government will have a higher success rate than private individuals investing their own money?  Even Wallace finds it necessary to bring Goolsbee back on track.  The transcript from Fox News Sunday is available here:

WALLACE: But let me just ask you, sir, do you see anything wrong with what Bain Capital did, and what lots of money, millions of dollars into this steel industry, the time when the steel was in trouble, what's wrong with that? 

GOOLSBEE: Well, it depends on how they did it. And as I say, they ought to turn over the annual records of the company.If you want to establish they did not have kind of a leverage buy out mentality of pulling the resources out of the company -- turn over the records and let the people see what the business record was. Don't just pick two or three companies that are the success stories and say look at these because that invites the ones that went wrong.In this case, the company did horribly but the investors did great. So, I think it's a little bit different than a normal investor philosophy which if we can turn the company around in a positive way, we benefit. This was the case where they canceled the pension, they drove the company into the ground but the investors from Bain actually profited a great deal. 

WALLACE: Let me follow up with Congressman Paul Ryan.Because the Obama campaign says the point of Romney economics is to make money for Bain, to make money for their investors, even if all of the workers get wiped out. And in this particular case, with the steel mill in Kansas City, the workers and that plant went bankrupt. The 750 workers were laid off and Bain did make millions of dollars in profits. 

RYAN: You know what's ironic about this, Chris, Mitt Romney was running the Olympics during this time. He wasn't even running Bain during the time period in question.I think the individual if I'm not mistaken who was running Bain is a big Obama contributor.But for the point, Chris, what Bain did was they used private capital to help struggling businesses. What President Obama is doing is he's gambling with taxpayer money and giving money to corporate contributors, to campaign contributors like Solyndra and he's losing taxpayer money.So, what we have in the Obama administration is this crony capitalism, this corporate welfare where President Obama thinks it's right that we taxpayer dollars to give to private companies and take bets on these private companies. That's wrong.What is right is a private sector that you have risked that capital. You put capital in businesses whether they're struggling or not to try and grow those businesses, some succeed, some don't. On the net, when on Mitt Romney ran Bain, they were very successful. They created thousands of jobs, great success stories.But for the point, we don't think that the government should be in the position of picking winners or losers in the economy which is the result of the president's economics.  

WALLACE: Let me -- 

RYAN: The result of it is, we have stagnation. 

WALLACE: Let me let Mr. Goolsbee into that.I mean, what about the argument that, you know, it's the private sector. If companies want to take a chance, they take a chance. But the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers. 

GOOLSBEE: Well, that's two different arguments. The first one I actually think is a little bit cheeky because in several of these bankruptcy cases, you saw the investors profit by dumping the pension on to the government and actually getting bailouts from the government, which helped to cover the profits that were going to the investors.On the picking of winners, it is absolutely not the Obama philosophy to try to transform the government into only picking winners. By that I think Congressman Ryan is referring to things like in the midst of the crisis deciding to save General Motors and the auto industry. 

WALLACE: I think wait a minute. Without speaking for him, I think he's talking about things like Solyndra. . . .