Lan T. Pham holds a Ph.D. in applied economics with a background in statistics, international trade and development and a wide range of research. She spent some years in the private sector working on financial risk management issues and years in academia… and then was put on a road less traveled.

My first post, Welcome to Economics Voodoo, provides closure to the congressional inquiry that began not too long after I joined the Congressional Budget Office in fall 2010 as a senior congressional financial economist. At CBO, I was pressured to not write about the damage from the banking and financial system collapse since fall 2008 as CBO – in particular, Assistant Director-Chief Economist/MIT Professor Deborah Lucas who was called by the U.S. President to serve in a leadership position at the CBO – provided research from Goldman Sachs and policy from Morgan Stanley (both on CBO’s panel of economic advisors) to incorporate into writings for Congress. After 2 ½ months I was fired as the President’s CBO Chief Economist Lucas and CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf, a Harvard Ph.D. economist, determined I lacked any knowledge of economics and finance.

Why EconomicsVoodoo.com

I share this experience to give an indication of the concerted efforts to keep the public from understanding the depths of the problems we face and why, and the far-reaching consequences of what is unfolding.

When the true nature of the issues would not come out through mainstream channels – the congressional inquiry by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Wall Street Journal, and ABC News – they were made public when ZeroHedge.com published “Terminated CBO Whistleblower Shares Her Full Story” (March 15, 2012).