Choose your economic dream team

>> from real baseball to a brand new fantasy league for wonks. reuters breaking views is putting down a page where you can assemble an economic team you can do one for obama and the other guy, romney . we have five categories, budgeting, finance, job creation , legislation and international. i put together a dream team for obama and another one for the other guy for whatever reason. there was little less dreamy. maybe i'm not quite doing it right. luckily we have the man behind the game to help us. friend of the show, rob cox . america's editor. and apparently reuters breaking views. let me break down the team that i put together with is all nepotism all the time because that's how hiring should be. i picked bloomberg. i've met him a number of times to be the treasury secretary. i picked austin gould to be a brilliant guy. national economic council . we went to high school . jared bernstein for fed reserve chair, he, like you, friend of the show. and cheryl sandberg because she seems like a super woman and facebook is awesome.

>> did you pick one for the other guy that you won't name?

>> i did pick a team but i didn't write it down.

>> no, for the wild card .

>> sandberg was a wild card .

>> you have four positions. you have some of the right ones, the ones i would pick. mike bloomberg , he scores very high. we scored all the candidates. 70 different people. mike bloomberg scores high in all of those counts, right? you want to put him in. i don't know if he'd want to be treasury secretary. that would be working for other people. i thought you could propose him as budget czar in the wild card . the other guy, not just obama , could choose him to do that. that would be an interesting way to reach across the aisle and get something done.

>> what do you want people to get out of playing this game? it's fun and a little educational. what is the point?

>> really educational, right? it's really fun. no. the truth is i want people to focus on the economic issues. it's all about the debates. the country does face a lot of really serious fiscal issues. if not immediately, although we have created this artificial crisis in the fiscal cliff. it's really boring. people don't want to necessarily focus on how to make entitlement spending work. what do i care about 30 years if i'm 50? maybe it doesn't matter. so the economic team is really important to fixing this. and it's my view basically whoever wins, whether it's obama or romney , is basically going to have one big docier flopped in their lap. it's either we've gone over the fiscal cliff and have you to deal with it in reverse, or we've kicked the can down the road and done a patch that gets us to july 4th to be patriotic and we have another physical cliff to not go over. to do that you have to reach across the aisle and work with democrats and republicans to get something done. so that, to me, is sort of day one even though i've heard a lot of promises from both sides, particularly from the republican side , about what they will do on day one.

>> so i plugged in obama 's current economic team. i plugged in geithner and sperling and bernanke . i chose the wild card . i came up with a pretty high number. i got a 68. that's a good number. economy is not so great. things are not looking so good. so how is this economic team performed so well in your test?

>> that's a very good question. it's about experience. the five things, how are they -- how do they score on these things? if you had looked on job creation , they had scored poorly.

>> that explains it.

>> i mean, that's a very good point. it's difficult to find, you know, anyone. in fact, no one gets 100. there's no way to get 100.

>> is there a way for romney to beat obama though? i tried that too. it was very difficult.

>> you can do it. in fact, the average score is 13.4 for republicans and democrats.

>> okay.

>> that's the average.

>> those numbers were very high.

>> you know why, it's about experience. if you've been out of running these agencies being in the federal reserve chairman or running the treasury for a few years, you might be a little rusty in terms of the wheels of government, right? but if you put in someone like -- like bernanke scores high. i know people disagree with bernanke 's policies. in my dream team i would say keep bernanke . he's the guy that did the trade, let him unwind it. for his own legacy, he should want to do it. he does score high. it is difficult to find a good fed chairman from the republican side . maybe i'm just -- maybe i didn't find the right people.

>> rob, you talk about geithner scoring high. geithner 's made it clear he's leaving when this term is over, whatever happens to obama .

>> treasury secretary.

>> let's seau bomb ma is re-elected. one thing that strikes me is the criticism from the left is he had too many people like geithner on the administration. too many people all over the crisis that he inherited. not a different approach to how to fix the economy. it seems to me with geithner leaving you have a fundamental choice if obama is re-elected for the treasury secretary. the name you proposed is erskine bow bowles. we're going back to the grand bargain. raise the retirement age. medicare is on the table. maybe some tax table that reduces the overall marginal rates. there would be a lot of pressure, i would argue justifiable bli from the left, to junk that approach. focus on the demand side and more focused on tax fairness. a real decision for obama to make if he's re-elected.

>> right. one of the big mistakes that the obama administration says, they didn't have enough of the private sector organization. the one way i would propose to deal with that is put in someone like larry fink. people will scream, oh, my god, wall street . someone who's actually been in the trenches hiring and firing. you need somebody who's done that.

>> speaking of the trenches, when you redo this game can you make it a foreign policy so we can do risk and attack on the country.

>> thank you very much. up next, if you've ever wanted to see steve kornacki in high school , just wait. [