Any hopes that President Obama might somehow recognize the utter failure of his economic policies and seek new ideas and directions were dashed by his selection Monday of Princeton University economist Alan E. Krueger to succeed Austan D. Goolsbee as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Krueger previously served as an assistant secretary of the Treasury under Timothy Geithner. Obama praised Krueger’s work during the first two years of his administration, and said Krueger’s chief task in the new job will be to help develop policy recommendations to get the stagnating economy growing again. Don’t expect any new ideas from Krueger. He was among the architects of such economic stimulus failures as the “cash for clunkers” program. As The Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll pointed out in Beltway Confidential, the clunkers initiative destroyed half a million functioning automobiles as a means of providing automakers a short-term boost in sales. Like all addictions, however, the clunkers fix soon wore off, leaving automakers with the same problem they had before: a recessionary economy and policies in Washington almost certain to prolong the misery.

Krueger first came to public notice during the Clinton years when he co-authored a study seeking to disprove the common-sense economic truth that minimum-wage increases make it more costly for employers to hire teenagers and other low-skilled workers, which means they hire fewer of them, thus driving up unemployment. Legions of liberal politicians and academics have endlessly quoted the Krueger study to challenge critics of higher minimum wages. So don’t be surprised if sometime in the near future Obama endorses minimum-wage increases as an incentive for job creation.