Another reason Obama shouldn't choose Larry Summers as Treas. Sec!

November 05, 2008
The Problem with Summers
Posted by Jonathan Zasloff

Lots of reports flying around that Larry Summers is in line to be Obama's Treasury Secretary. I think that this could be a mistake.

I have tremendous respect for Summers. He is often pilloried as a green eyeshade centrist, but in many ways he is very progressive: he fought very hard against the regressive Republican tax proposals, for example. And many of the things he is attacked for boil down to tentative musings (which is ironic because he's very opinionated). Those who call him a sexist are really just distorting the context of his remarks.

But that in and of itself it a problem: as someone once said of Dean Acheson, Summers will be the smartest guy in any room he walks into, but not smart enough to hide it. And in the context of finance, which will require good Congressional relations (less so than foreign policy), that could be a real problem.

More important is Summers' close relationship with (some would say protection of) Andrei Schleifer. Schleifer is another brilliant economist who seemed to think that his brilliance allowed him trade tens of millions of dollars of Russian stocks while directing the pace and direction of Russian privatization. The US government sued Schleifer and Harvard University (where Schleifer holds a professorship and which held the USAID contract under which Schleifer worked) for fraud. Harvard settled the lawsuit and paid several million dollars to the government.

And who was President of Harvard when the university decided to settle the lawsuit? Larry Summers. It is not unreasonable speculation that Harvard settled the lawsuit the way it did in order to protect the friend of the President. It's also not unreasonable to suggest that this, not anything about public statements, was the cause of Summers' downfall from the Harvard Presidency.

Maybe this is all unfair to Summers. But it's the last thing in the world that a new Obama Administration wants being replayed in the news if Summers is nominated. This is especially true given that a lot of the financial crisis is perceived as being about favors being done for powerful people, and insider deals made in Washington.

It might be something else if Summers had been cleared, or if he was the only or sole candidate for the job. But he's not. Don't go there.

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_obama_presidency_/2008/11/the_problem_with_summers.php

He does have the Nobel prize after all.

Krugman would be so awesome.

:hi:

But, I hope to heaven they find someone else. After all, he thought it was entirely appropriate to suggest that women aren't good in engineering and science because of their genetics. I want to quote him directly here.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers_remarks_on_women_draw_fire/

"The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. ''I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Summers said in an interview Saturday. ''Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all.

"This was the point that most angered some of the listeners, several of whom said Summers said that women do not have the same ''innate ability" or ''natural ability" as men in some fields.

"Asked about this, Summers said, ''It's possible I made some reference to innate differences. . . I did say that you have to be careful in attributing things to socialization. . . That's what we would prefer to believe, but these are things that need to be studied.""

It's an area of ferment, okay, right along with racist theories of why different ethnic groups score as they do on standardized tests. I might also add that one of the environmental explanations he positted was that, as mothers, women can't put in the long hours required to do well in academic positions.

Surely, there must be someone else for the job.

You might have seen one of my recent DU references to my encounter with Summers at JFK while waiting to board a flight to Madrid. What a loudmouth asshole he is! Barking loudly into his cell phone at one of his little minions "What is Treasury saying?" and "I'm advising Obama on this so I have to know!" Only a very insecure little man would strut around letting everybody "know" who he is!

No, I missed that. :wow:

I just thought he was some bigmouth nobody until he said (loudly of course)"Email that to me at summers@harvard.edu." That's when I snuck a peek at him and sure enough, it was him. My travel buddy and I were tittering about his swagger and thought he was just a big nobody.

I think it's interesting that he felt it necessary to "impress" us!

That allowed the investment banks to merge. The way Obama has handled the financial crisis (pushing for a bailout) and the FISA bill has me the most worried so far. Putting Summers anywhere near the treasury would make me think it's just more of the same pro big business nonsense that Clinton went for. Too many of the same Clinton names keep popping up, anyway.

"PR Operative" promoting him to Obama.