Lawrence Summers

I really think Obama needs to get rid of this individual. I didn't know very much about him (except that lovely stuff about women on average not having as much of an aptitude for the natural sciences as men) and granted this is just his wiki page. But, I really don't like much of what I am reading. Why is this guy even a Dem?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

Much of Summers's tenure at the Treasury Department was focused on international economic issues. He was deeply involved in Clinton administration's effort to bail out Mexico and Russia when those nations had currency crises.<5> Summers forced the Korean government to raise its interest rates and balance its budget in the midst of a recession, policies criticized by liberal economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz.<6> According to the book The Chastening, by Paul Blustein, during this crisis, Summers, along with Paul Wolfowitz, pushed for regime change in Indonesia.<6>

As Treasury Secretary, Summers led the Clinton administration's opposition to tax cuts proposed by the Republican Congress in 1999. <7> Also during his stint in the Clinton administration, Summers was successful in pushing for capital gains tax cuts. During the California energy crisis of 2000, then-Treasury Secretary Summers teamed with Alan Greenspan and Enron executive Kenneth Lay to lecture California Governor Gray Davis on the causes of the crisis, explaining that the problem was excessive government regulation.<8> Under the advice of Kenneth Lay, Summers urged Davis to relax California's environmental standards in order to reassure the markets.<9>

Summers hailed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services (by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act): "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," Summers said.<10> "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."<10> Many critics, including President Barack Obama, have suggested the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis was caused by the partial repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act.<11>

And in response to anyone who wants to pull the "Daddy knows better than you. Obama won the election, he knows who to pick blah blah...", people's track records are out there so that we voters can make up our minds about this sort of stuff. And Summers' record sucks...at least by my lights for what I want to see in government officials.

C'mon Mr.President please get rid of this guy. He is a drag on your team.

We voters don't make the decision.

We elect the guy (or gal) and that person chooses the team. That's how it works.

He's chosen his team, I say let them get to work, and let's hope for the best.

Obama's not going to dump these guys--he picked them because he LIKES them. It's not a question of "Daddy knows best"--the issue here is that the choice is not ours--it's "Daddy's." And Daddy isn't about to cede that authority to us. Daddy intends to lead, and we can either follow or get the hell out of the way...